Image Selection

Here are some photographs I've been taking in the studio, there are hundreds of them so I've only chosen a small selection. For my finals I will be choosing 12 to print: 6 people and 6 objects which will be paired but them shuffled around like our memories often are. I want the connections between each pair to be unclear to the viewer - they may try to guess at which memory belongs to which face but in the end a photography can only tell us so much about a person's emotion, history, thoughts etc. This is what I wish to outline.

Some photos like the two shown here (headphones and dvd) are very clearly photographed with quite a high exposure compared to some others. Though these are perhaps better photos is the formal sense, I think they lose a lot of the nostalgia and mystery which some other objects hold in their shadows and the dropping out of focus which sometimes occurs as objects disappear into the black. I probably won't be using these two photos for this reason and also because although they were chosen by two models I photographed, their associations with technology and the future might overwhelm the nostalgic mood I am trying to create, diverting the themes of my final series down an unintended path!

This photo exemplifies the fading into darkness I was speaking of - though the features which are lit are clearly that of a face, you lose a lot of the person to darkness and I think this is reminiscent of the confusion often associated with memory: we can never remember the entire thing but only fragments. To create this effect I have used a few light sources: window light and tungsten as this was not shot in the studio. However all light sources were positioned on the one side of the model's face and so although there is dimension in the lighting there is also that blacking out of the left side.