Final edited proposal

Elizabeth Chandler - BA(HONS) Photography - Level 4

Professional Frameworks - The City

Project Proposal (Deadline 11th January 2012)

In my initial proposal I explained how I was highly enthused by this brief and had many ideas and concepts which I wished to explore visually and research into further before settling on one final area.

I created a slide show of the work produced to present during a feedback session which contained five diverse responses to the city brief. From this I established which idea was the most interesting to my fellow peers, and decided which concept was potentially most successful and original.

The concept I will be exploring in response to this brief has been inspired by the work of photographers such as Nan Goldin, Corrine Day, Richard Billingham and Natasha Caruana and their documentary , snapshot style photographs. In addition Paul Graham, and the way his work contains social and political themes.

I plan to visit the city centre at night/early hours of the morning on as many occasions as possible, this will enable me to gather many photographs of different activities and events. 

I have began, and will continue reading up on british youth culture, feminism, “ladettes” and binge drinking, as well as researching into alcohol related crime and statistics regarding alcohol consumption in the UK. 

Books by authors such as Angela McRobbie and Abigail Solomon-Godeau could help inform this project, as well as my understanding of my subjects.

I will look more into the category of Snapshot photography, a topic covered by writers such as Charlotte Cotton and Liz Wells, to extend my knowledge of the genre of photography I am working with. 

My reason for choosing to shoot in this style is due to the fact that the aesthetics of snapshots connotes a sense of something being recorded that shouldn’t be seen.

In addition photographs too formally constructed would lack the essence of a true scene being captured.

My aim is to produce a body of work that sits as a chronological time line displaying the progression of a night out and the deterioration of personal values via spouts of violence, criminal damage and public presentation.

I am interested in exploring the actions of people on a night out and to what extent such behavior is socially un acceptable. As well as the ways in which people represent themselves and how such representations differ when they are intoxicated. “public presentation doesn’t tell tales on private lives.” (A quote from “The Flock” - a film by Andrew Lau, 2006)

I have decided to title my project “Fuck Fashion, fuck vogue, fuck what’s pretty” which is quoted by Sontag in her book On Photography(1979:44)

This is said in relation to the work of Diane Arbus and the ways in which her images are reactive against what is approved. 

A perfect description of I am striving to achieve in my photographs.

Each photograph will be titled with the time at which it was taken and all of the final photo’s I select will be from a combination of different occasions when I visit the city centre at night. I hope this will build up a series which displays variety yet highlights the repetitiveness of some events which frequently occur. In addition, on my first trip to the city centre photographing at night I came across unusual objects that had been left behind/lost. I picked these up and kept them incase of a possible link to my photographs, on future shoots I will look out for more obscure items, especially those close/in the same location as my photographs, these will be put in my sketchbook, or potentially displayed alongside the relevant pictures.

All of my photographs will be in colour. Any photographs taken outside will have an orangey glow from the tungsten street lights as I will be incorrectly setting my white balance to enhance the feeling of the time of day. As well, I hope this aesthetic will enable the audience to imagine themselves in the scene and gain a more realistic view of whats occurring. This is much alike the way the street lighting was utilized by Billingham in his series, The Black Country.

I will also maintain an intentional grainy aesthetic as to enhance the sense of grunge and spontaneity in the photographs, this will be achieved by using a high ISO setting.

There are questions of an ethical nature that can be applied to this work, I will be photographing people when they aren’t expecting to be recorded as well as potentially capturing private moments, even if they are occurring publicly.