At this point of my project I want to take a brief look back at where I have got to and where it can lead me. The beginnings of the project were aiming towards a pop cultured theme bursting with colour and character.
These were my initial designs made solely on photoshop from numerous different photos merged. My project also was birthing a smmetrical image. This was apparent in the design of the title image (above) and my blog titles.
I originally had three blog title that were going to change in a continuous cycle over the course of the project but I never followed this through because I like the photo of Kate Moss hugging herself (bottom) the most because it was a strong message about self-acceptance and love. My blog also featured a subtitle at the time which was "art is propaganda" which came from my brainstorm session. I used it as a subtitle because I thought it presented a strong message and it is a controversial statement which goes against the beliefs and work of may respectable people of our time.
This point of the project was when I took time out to go and visit galleries and look at work of other artists who explore different realms of art and creativity. I visited The Victoria & Albert Museum and the Natural History Museum as well as Highgate cemetery. From these visits, I derived a strong message of "question existence which literally popped into my head whilst walking through a land of souls laid to rest; known as the cemetery to you and me. It lead me on a trail of deep thoughts on humanity and immortality. I done a short project on aliens and humans using found photgraphy on the internet and using photoshop to create alien beings. At this point, I discovered video artist, Marco Brambilla. Brambilla turned out to be very inspirational and important to my project.
Brambilla's moving art films take photography, film making, video editing and effects to another level with his amazing and innovative ideas that immediately captivated me. I aimed to embark on a journey inspired by his work. I looked at the work of Martin Schoeller, the photographer, and was amazed by his in-depth studies of the human face.
His work inspired me to go on and do my own response to his work and I was quite happy with the end products.
At this point in my project I need to tie the loose ends so I linked in my work related to Martin Schoeller with the alien work that I created and the Marco Brambilla videos. I used all those ideas and created a 5 second movie of a moving photo I created after learning how to use Adobe After Effects.
At this point, I was beginning to see the first steps towards a final piece. All my work on humanity, life, aliens and art as propaganda led me to look at world journalism photography in a presentation I made on Prezi.com. In the presentation, I talk about the implications of world journalism, its purpose and its importance. I was truly inspired by my findings and had created a new pathway in my work.
Of course I would have to take some of my own propaganda photography as I was so close to the end of the project. I organised an on-location photo shoot to try and re-create a hard hitting visual of a war-torn environment and a heartbroken character. I produced this:
ne phtoshoot that I also done with this model was a response to preconception and assumptions made by Western society against people in the middle-east and the wealth.
I planned on putting a huge slogan on the bottom of the chosen photo that would say "problem" posing a question to the Western world to ask themselves if they have an issue with people in the Eastern block that do not meet the poverty struck stereotype. I did not go through with developing this shoot because the angles and poses in which it was shot were not what I had hoped for.
I wanted to make a magazine cover with the final photo because it shows my belief that I believe the poverty and violence on the other side of the world is glamorised and we are forced to spectate through the magazines. So I re-created my own TIME magazine cover. TIME magazine often cover hard-hitting stories and gets a lot of tension as it is one of the top selling magazines.
The magazine cover was successful and is a strong visual. You can see a tear falling whilst the emtional mother tightly clings on to her baby. Although, quite a few people immediately assumed I was trying to take a stunning fashion shoot rather than a re-enactment.