Bachelors Degree Final Submission
(Pati Tyrell, Faggot 2018) (img. 1)
I started this series wanting to delve deeply into the subject matter of Diaspora. Being a child of immigrants, I felt for much of my life, seperated from my peers. Even more so being a biracial woman in her late (oh god) 30s and growing up in the 90s. We were some of the beta testers for racial integration and redefinement of social stereotypes.
The further i dug into this however, the more I realised that this sense of displacement was not something I was alone in feeling. People feel this no matter if they are from this land or not. The melting pot of culture we are all becoming drives yearning to understand our roots, however we are a society still founded upon seperation and disconnection caused by historical attitudes that still leach themselves into our ideologies.
Greatful Addiction Series 2018 (img.2)
The other thing that I really wanted to explore with this series was merging my urban art practice with my photography work. Much as Pati Tyrell did with his series on queer culture [image 1] in New Zealand, I wanted to play with text and it impact on the subject and the viewer. Cross pollinating my disciplines. The thing I love about graffiti is the impact of words. Much of my street writing has concentrated on the political and social themes.
Napier, Hawkes Bay Auckland Combat Zone 2019
Indoctrination (img. 3) Conspicuous Consumption (img. 4)
With this in mind I dug into booking models into the studio. Very carefully choosing people I thought would not only embody the themes of the photos themselves but that had themselves experienced labelling through their own stories.
My initial ideas around the series was to shoot highly layered vogue like layouts, much in the same way that I had with my Grateful addiction Series (img .2)
Using vintage clothing to speak to social stereotyping having been a perpetuated throughout time. However, after assessing initial collection of three images, I just felt they weren't pushing boundaries near enough. Whilst they were beautiful images they lacked any real depth and resemblance of portraying the message I wanted them to.
The whole point of the collection was to push them in a more contemporary direction. Something I felt that the over staging was detracting from.
Before I could even start thinking about intergrating text into the works I wanted to make sure the initial photography work was solid enough to convey each piece's message.
One of the most important decisions being this stripping right back of the effects and overlays on the pieces. Unlike my previous series I wanted to steer very clear of the fantasy aesthetic and push towards more highly editorial works.
Choosing to keep skin tones realistic and really pushing my skills within Photoshop post production.
I worked pretty steadily, cramming in as many models as I could over the unit period and working to perfect blending techniques. Completing a volume of work that I felt began to push towards the level of conceptuality that I wanted. To be completely honest, it was at this point that I had a slight nervous break down! I felt like I was pushing and pushing at the pieces and while they were great..... they were no where near the "stop in your tracks, smack ya in the face" pieces that I wanted them to be. Something was missing and off that I couldn't put my finger on. Upon consultation with a mentor, it was suggested that I further extend my skills to replacing back grounds and working to integrate the text and play with how that new afflictions would change the work.
This was the eureka moment. I revised every single photo. Thinking very carefully about colour implications and how that reflected both culture and message. About each and every form manipulation with precise calculation. I wanted to make sure every alteration or addition to image and form related back into the story I was attempting to weave.
This also meant careful consideration of text. Man the things I know about the history of typefaces now!!! 3 hours of my life I'll never get back (thanks Jerry) but totally worth it.
Understanding how a contemporary type face such as bubble pop lettering (which heavily references back to the graffiti scene of the 80s and 90s, also a time period of great change in immigration and refugee laws and black culture) as opposed to a gothic type (steeped in religious history) was pivotal to negotiating the tone and structure. Allowing the words themselves to dictated that choice in lettering.