Unit 3 Personal Investigation

The insight into peoples and body language


For my personal investigation I started off by exploring controversial issues in society, which have, various negative connation associated with them for example homosexuality, teenage violence, homelessness etc. Stereotypically teenagers are thought to be out of control and particularly moody causing havoc wherever they go. I wanted to explore an issue in society, which would be frowned upon as I felt this would tug on the audiences ‘heartstrings. It would provoke and challenge the audience to look at the wider picture, rather than the prejudice opinions, which we may have as a society. By looking at the perceptions of an outside audience watching these events take place but also from a victim’s point of view, the real story could potentially very powerful. How society does chose to represent this information and feed it to the public. Through summer I documented different people who fit into the ‘controversial issues’ bracket hoping to seek further inspiration from this.

Through the development of my idea, I then went slightly on a tanged and decided to investigate specifically relationships. Different people have different relationships with each other. Which led me to follow and document different people’s body language and how they interacted with each other. Whether they were positive interactions or negative encounters. I sat down and I noted different interactions between family members, through to random people in town. Through body language you can make a vague judgment of peoples relationships and what sort of relationships that they have, whether this being a couple holding handing and talking merrily may suggest that they have a positive relationship. However this is the image that they chose to display to us as an audience, what if the image we saw was not as simple and happy has we presumed.  This led me to think deeper about trying to represent hidden signs, which are displayed, to use but we may not recognise them as an audience.

ISSUES AND EMOTIONS

I began by created a brief mood board of all the images which firstly displayed issues in the world followed by, different people’s body language and facial expresses. Focusing mainly on dark emotions and facial expression was interesting and I found myself drawn to it. The idea that what we see is not the truth, behind those photographs is an untold story, which as audience we do not know unless we are informed of it. Adverse relationships tend to catch the audience’s attention as they deeply want to know what the issue is but instead display this as though they are disinterested. For example when we see a couple in public in the middle of a heated argument, the majority of people tend to look away and avoid the situation, due to discomfort or to disguise their interest. This is in our nature as human beings; this is something we cannot change. By choosing this particular approach I hoped to captivate the audience’s attention quite nicely.

FIRST 100 PHOTOGRAPHS

Footprints in the sand 

The silent treatment

Blocking out the pain

Stress

Drowning away the pain

Abusive text messages

The anger 

The Lose of hair

What we see is what they  chose to show

Am happy

Away from the world

Afraid to leave the house

The perfect cliché 

We see what they choose to show

Looking back to our youth

Message after message

DRAWING INSPIRATION

After shooting my first 100 photographs I then realised that I was fascinated in exploring domestic violence which can be seen as a taboo topic. Something which the audience may be feel uncomfortable to witness, and may tend to avoid any domestic violent encounters. I started to piece together another mood board which related to this specific issue and from this I was interested in the striking, bold and statement photographs. They were shot in the studio with various Rembrandt light setting and also used Photoshop. In order to achieve a surreal effect, the images were manipulated intensively to exaggerate the effects off the abuse. They appear to be much more powerful and send a bolder message to the target audience. This is the general representation which the media tends to display to society. By approaching it this way it evokes the audience’s emotion and tries to display the brutal effects of domestic violence and how serious they can be. Subjectively I feel as though by representing domestic abuse in a surreal way this could awake the audience of how serious the affects and the victims feel. However I must be careful as this fabric domestic abuse and make it appear like it is not a serious matter.

In my work I would like to explore various artists, who work in contrasting ways in order to achieve various looks in their photography, which would then lead me to make a skilful decision to which style I wanted pursue. It would be a good experience to demonstrate this issue in a metaphoric way as this may appear much more powerful as it would express the emotional effects of Domestic Violence. However the simplicity of representing it in a literal form may show a literal and honest overview of the issue and as a result be just as effective.