Photo by Holly Webb
My research into the different types of photojournalism and different photojournalists have inspired me a lot more with ideas for my own project.
To see my first idea, click here.
To see my second idea, click here.
3) then vs. now
Inspiration:
This idea mainly came from my research of Mihaela Noroc‘s work, with a slightly different twist.
I definitely want to include some type of portraiture in my project, and I was thinking about the combination of Atlas of Beauty and Humans of New York who take portraits of people and put them alongside the person’s story.
I wanted to do something similar, and I got this idea after finding the work of photojournalist Thoraya Merenesey today.
She goes around her local city and stops strangers. She films them and asks them all the same questions and puts it together in a video. I watched one earlier today that was titled ‘Strangers answer: what’s the most painful thing you’ve been told’.
I watched that video and it impacted me so much, I thought straight away: I want to do something similar for my project.
That is when I came up with this idea of asking strangers: if you could tell your teenage-self anything, what would you say?
I thought this would be a very impactful piece as everyone could relate in some way to what people will inevitably say to me, but also I thought that there was room for lots of impactful photos in the style of Mihaela Noroc’s portraits.
Plan:
I would like to shoot this idea as a series of documentary portraiture shots.
I would like to get old/teenage photos of the subjects and pose them in a similar way, so that I could later compare the photos and put them alongside one another.
I then want to ask all of the subjects the same question: if you could talk to your younger self, what advice would you give them? – or something along similar lines. Eg. What have you learnt? What did you do right? What did you do wrong? If you could change something, what would you not do?
I think I will have to speak to my module tutors about the details of this idea, for example asking whether the older photos would count as part of the 8-12 images, of if I could interview 8-12 individuals.
Because if this is the case, then I would like to interview as many people as possible. Perhaps taking only one photo per interviewee.
Either this, or taking two photos for every interviewee and talking to around 5-6 people. However, if I decided to do this then I won’t speak to strangers, but people who I know have an interesting story to tell.
For the images themself, I would like to shoot them in a similar way to Noroc’s work (see below) or a similar style to the portraits I found by photographer Steve McCurry (here):
McCurry – Portraits
Noroc – Atlas of Beauty
I like both styles, however Noroc frequently sticks to the standard head and shoulder portrait. She does stray sometimes, however it’s rare. This is why I was also very much inspired by McCurry’s work. He uses this standard set-up less, often capturing the subject in their environment or doing something that is relevant to their story. This is similar to what I’d like to do.
Contacts:
Because my first idea is quite idealistic and far-fetched, I have already sent out some emails to potential subjects for my second idea in case I can’t achieve my initial one.
I have not yet contacted anyone regarding this idea, however I do believe it will be the easiest to pull together out of my ideas so far. For this project, I could interview anyone really – regardless of where they live or who they are.
This is why this idea is not my priority as I don’t know how newsworthy it will be in comparison to the other two ideas.
However I am prepared to pursue this idea and pull it off to the best of my ability if the other two are to fail.
I thought that my first idea was very strong if I were able to pull it off, and so I was very passionate about it. However, after going over the details and plans for this idea and my second one, I think that I would be very passionate about producing both pieces of work. Both this idea and my ‘motherhood’ idea are contenders for my project is my first idea doesn’t work out.
To read about my first idea, click here.
To read about my second idea, click here.
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