Capturing a memory...

 

After experimenting with crowds and faces and also re-reading my research notes, I decided I wanted to make the project more personal by using photographs of me and my family. I wanted these photographs to have a connection with me so that the work I produce has a meaning. Using old photographs is a perfect example of capturing a memory, photographs may fade and even diminish but they are still proof of a moment in time, a memory that can never fully disappear. I began going through some old photo albums and taking photos that I wanted to work with, most of the photographs are of me and my brothers and sisters with the odd appearance of my Mum and Dad. The photographs that involved me and my brothers and sisters were taken from when we was a lot younger, these images are the best ones to take because at that age, I didn’t care how I looked or how I would be perceived because at that age it didn’t matter, nothing mattered.

 

This stencil print was of one of my favourite photographs, it included me with my 2 sisters and 2 brothers, the family has grew since then, I am now 1 of 8. I honestly cannot remember this picture being taken but we all look happy and innocent and from looking at this picture, we haven’t changed much. My brothers haven’t aged at all, they look very similar.

This experiment is very unique; it controls all the elements of: random, spontaneous, fragmented and uncontrolled, words that would be associated with amnesia. I used the ink as a wet media that splattered over a stencil I had cut out. I was unsure and apprehensive about the results but it was an experiment that was worthwhile as the area of my younger brother turned out well and I could still recognise him through the cracks and splatter of the ink.

This ink drawing was situated on top of a chaotic background that represents how an amnesia patient mind would seem to come across. I used the colour brown to portray the idea of an older look, I decide to use the media of ink as it is hard to control when blowing at it through a straw, and this element also represents the idea of losing your memory which is out of a person’s control.

This experiment was about showing the development of how we all grew up and the differences in which we looked then and how we look now. As I know the photographs I can see the separate images clearly but they presentation of them was all wrong, because the image underneath was also black the stencil just merged into the photograph making the overall image abstract and confusing. I like the aspect of placing an image on top to show the developments and changes in people, this would fit in with the idea that when people have amnesia they forget newer memories but would remember people and memories from years ago, so they would remember me from when I was 5 but not now, I would become a stranger. The aspect of memories dying out with cracks appearing of older memories is something I want to explore and develop on within this project.