The power of the photograph – Reflection

“The photo becomes a memento or reference point for an experience or memory we have forgotten or never actually experienced.” http://www.flickr.com/photos/31794205@N02/show/

“The way in which I want to represent this is idea is by creating a number of staged images of memories that never happened but to the viewer they look as if they are genuine representations of the experience.”

These are my original aims from my proposal for this artefact. The outcome of this project I feel is not what I wanted it to be. I got too distracted by creating images that were staged, (an idea that I didn’t carry through) which lead to me spending less time thinking about the content of my images. Although I talked about the effect of the lighting within the images and how it influenced me solely as a viewer the actual events I’ve portrayed don’t represent any memory in particular therefore leading the viewer to a mundane or insignificant experience. The images failed to convey my intended meaning to the viewer the images fail to provide a ‘trigger’ which allows the viewer to relate the content back to their personal experiences enhancing and extending the narrative of the photo.

Within photos that we look back at events are what trigger us to remember them. This has to happen before the image can overtake the memory to become our main memento. Events such as Christmas, birthdays and other seasonal celebrations like Halloween and fireworks night often appear in family photo albums which is where I originally thought of the idea of the photograph being more powerful than the memory. The triggers within my images are only of everyday events; no signifiers of times of year are used there is just a meal time at a table that could anywhere at anytime. These events won’t engage with a viewer as they largely won’t share any connection with the content of the images meaning that they dismiss the image altogether.

After finishing my piece on power I know that I need to produce a higher standard of work in my next artifact based on spectacle. There are many ways in which I feel I can improve on the work I have just produced; within this piece I feel I stayed too much within what I already knew and didn’t challenge myself enough. The images would have been harder to do if I had tried to stage them all as originally planned therefore I need to develop a simple idea and then stick to its constraints and difficulties and try to produce the best work possible. I need to look back to how ‘Leth’ was forced into compromising situations by ‘Von Trier’ the outcome for Leth helps him to produce something that is arguably better than his original piece. I need to create my own ‘obstructions’ the first of which will be to work in one of my less favored mediums: moving image.

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