My conference with Christopher was directed to the photography that I wanted to focus on which is: memory, loss and more with the emphasis of the passing of my mother at the age of 18. We addressed several ideas on how to convey these topics along with his suggestions on directing those ideas.
When I asked Christopher for ideas of incorporating my mom writings of letters and a journal to me. I thought of photographing them with an image of her projected on the writings or audio of her words with a slide show of pictures. He offered another suggestion and that was taking those words and writing them on my body. Thinking about her words and where they affect me, how they fall on me and write them in those areas. By making it personal, I bring passion to the image, weight to her words.
Further ideas:
Create a diptych of myself wearing my mother’s wedding dress. A photograph from the front and one from the back. The strength in this image that Christopher noted was that the back does not zip up all the way, that would show that one life does not fit all.
The diptych idea actually evolved from a triptych idea I had that would photograph my life from the past, present and future. The Present could pull from the wedding dress photo. The Past would involve wearing clothes that are too big for me, thus my childhood dress up and the future could be represented in my wanting to be a mother one day. Christopher mentioned using the idea of the doll, as practice for motherhood but then he suggested an idea I like more and that would be using an African fetish, tying and doll to hang around my back to ward off evil spirits. I feel this would be more fitting with me and have a cultural backbone that would add depth to the piece.
Another aspect is taking family images and coping them on to laser tran or a similar transparent material, arranging them on me and photographing that.
Use fabric to create a photogram of my mom’s belongings on fabric and then sewn to fit me, photograph that.
There are other ideas to explore with the regard of the projection of images and layering of images on top of each other however, these didn’t excite Christopher as much as the previous ideas. To myself the above ideas seem more directed and the later mentioned ones are ones that I want to experiment with but not sure when I would have the opportunity.
My exploration since the conference:
