Final Major Project Proposal.

For my final major project I shall be photographing a series of images documenting a family member who has anorexia. My concept is documenting a family member, showing what she is going through, I'm not going to focus just on her anorexia though, I will be documenting her life, and the anorexia will show through naturally- I'm specially documenting her life in order to make the viewers care for my subject, I need to bring out her personally and show every aspect of her life so that people can relate and understand, and to achieve an emotional reaction to my images, people need to have that connection with her and have that concern that can only be caused through knowing her and by documenting her life I shall be making that connection between my subject and the viewers. I will be producing a collection of images, about 4-6 of them will be printed and displayed at the exhibition as well as creating a few books that will also be there at the exhibition.

I would like the quality of my books to be very professional, I want them to be hardbacked and smooth feeling.
The new skills I will need to acomplish what I am hoping to produce is a knowlege of anerexia and how to photograph it, knowledge of how to create a book and how to create a successful documentry project. Also, I need to know how to organise myself and orgainise the shoots so that I can photograph everything I need to in order for the best results and I need to know what I want to show/photograph.
My first sketches and ideas when I decided on this project idea(the second image below features images names of the first test shots I took, see post "Final Major Project Idea Generation":

It was after doing the first test shots that I decided to do the images in a square format to be more personal and close and the fact that it means cropping some of the image out- only seeing certain things which is what I only get to see, I never get to know exactly whats going on in her mind or with her- so the viewers would get to experience her experience of anoxia how I see it happening. 

SOURCE ONE:

I went to the library and found a documentary book "Days With My Father" and I wrote notes about the book, about the images- and I re-thought about what I was going to do(I'm going to type out the notes I wrote in the images below, I'm going to add to them too)

I found 'Days With My Father' was a really useful source, the images are strong and emotional, which is what I hope to achieve. I love the mix of image, text and images of the subjects notes/thoughts- all three types of images work so strongly together, even just looking through the pages when I first found it, resulted in me crying. The book's/projects perspective is mainly of the photographer, Phillip Toledano- but the photographer has also included images of notes which the subject wrote himself which work as insight into the subjects perspective and mind- having the subject's perspective too makes the narrative, the documentary and mood of the images more effective and strong- it gives important information about what the subject is feeling and going through, people who have no experience with no short-term memory loss would struggle to understand what it's like, so having that insight really pushes the narrative and the emotion of the documentary to another level.

The project/book as a whole comes across so beautifully, the story is told so clearly within the images and theres always more information to learn about the photographer and the subject's life as you read, this information being given by text and image which ultimately make the ending of the book more effective and saddening. Ascetically the images are quite dark(some images include more light than others, could be to suggest that not everyday was as bad as others) and "moody" theres something about them, how they've being edited that just captures the feeling of being lost, empty and alone- without even including the content of the image- this is just the mood that comes off the images. The images themselves are mostly all taken at close proximity, showing just how close the photographer and the subject are and the images the photographer includes of himself are rather effective to the narrative- especially the one his father(the subject) took- the emotion and strength in the images just builds and builds throughout. All the images themselves have a lot in common: the connections being they are all taken in the subjects home, the images don't all included the subject but they provide extra information to the narrative and the documentation and each image captures the same feeling: an emptiness, loss and being lost and noticed all the images seem to be neutral- toned down as if to suggest lack of liveliness/life or to suggest loss of something important such as is mother, and by the end of the book, his father. 

I noticed that a few of the images in the book, are shot from behind so theres no face within the image but you sell have information given to you which is what I wanted to do but I wasn't going to give away an identity/face at all- but after looking at the whole book I realised when I decided to not have a face to my subject that I would loose a great deal of information and emotion and seeing how both behind and face shots work together in the book, has changed my mind and I will experiment with both types of no-face shots and face shots and decide which to choose after doing both. The book had a few images with old family pictures within them too, which got me thinking of another image idea I could do but if I was to do this shot it would be for a cover or a first image, maybe a last because it would be different shot from the rest of the images: set up not documented. (see the images of my notes above to see the idea) The book also made me think about the perspective of the project- do I want my own thoughts/perspective along with the images or not? I don't really think it would be as effective in this project but I could always try it out and see. I also thought about documenting her room, her surroundings and see if I could give any extra information for that- or wether just sticking to her would be a better idea, again I will try it out and see. 

SOURCE TWO: I searched google to see if any other photographers had done an anorexia project, and they had. I came across this one photographer, Felicia Webb who did a documentary on multiple anorexia sufferers (click the link below and click the first project "Anorexia: Nil By Mouth") http://feliciawebb.co.uk/webb.swf

Webb's aim was to offer a deeper understanding of the conditions anorexia and bulimia, she worked with people with eating disorders for three years and produced a series of harsh, hard hitting, shocking images, documenting the sufferers. Most of the images also feature quotes from the subjects next to them or information/ an explanation of the image shown next to it and this is constituent throughout the project, only a few images don't have any text with them. The project is black and white, I think this is to show conflict,which I think is a big part of the narrative/what the photographer captured. The shots are very mixed, two in particular are set up as if a portrait but mainly the images are all documenting from an observers point of view, you can tell that Webb didn't know the subject's she documented as the images were taken at a rather distance proximity most of the time, although there are a few were obvious trust was needed, I think she spent more time with one sufferer than the others- this comes across because the amount of images of each subject is different, theres definatly more of one person's life than the other subject's- I'm only making these comments from what I can see from the website, they're will defiantly be loads more images of each subject that weren't used but what got put across from the online images is that more time was spent with the one sufferer. Themes of not achieving things or not being able to achieve things come across from the narrative as well as the idea of lost time and regrets come across too- desperation. Looking at source one and two I can see that both photographers have changed the tone/colours of their images in order to get across a mood within the images- I myself already thought of this when doing my test shots and decided to use a slight cooling filter and de-saturate the images I felt that were too warm on my projects images but I may try different things with them before I decide for good.

I decided to play around with the astectics of my images so far after realizing that it was wrong of me to just have tried one effect and stick to it:

desaturating the image by 30:

black and white:

Warming filter 34%:

 these images were edited further from the already cooling filter edited images, I wanted to see what the images would be like with these different effects without the cooling filter so I have to use some non-edited images now.

Black and white:

-34% saturation:

6% cooling filter & -16 saturation:

SOURCE THREE:

http://www.laurengreenfield.com/index.php?p=Y6QZZ990

Lauren Greenfield, did a whole documentary project: film and image on sufferers of eating disorders, she stayed for over 6 months at a residential facility for the treatment of eating disorders entitled "Thin"

The images are all very colourful which is different from the other sources I've wrote about, all the images are different too; different locations, different subjects and content, taken at different distances- showing different levels of trust and intimacy with the subjects, some images the subjects aren't aware of the image being taken and others they are interacting with the photographer and some of the images function as portraits where as others are general documenting whats going on in a scene. Most images have captions/information about the subject/scene in the image and some give insights from the subjects.  

I feel that the documentary movie that Lauren Greenfield did was much more effective and insightful than the images she took are. I feel that the images, ascetically are too happy, although I admire her for trying something different to everyone else, I think it ultimately effected her images in a bad way by making them really colourful and bright- it just gives off a different feel, the subject is a serious one and the subjects with in the images are unhappy, but the images don't capture how bad they feel, how bad the diseases are. The captions with the images help get back some of the emotion lost from the ascetics of the images; the little bits of information/insight from the subjects makes the images more emotion and make some of them make sense, as without the information they wouldn't make sense. The documentary movie goes into a lot more detail obviously but I think by doing both video and image you get a much greater and deeper understanding and look into the subjects lives, what they've being with and what they still have to go through. The mix of media was a very good choice, made a very strong and powerful project. 

SOURCE FOUR:

http://www.photographyserved.com/gallery/Outlines-the-future-Anorexia/6683439

This source is an example of what I don't want my images to look like or communicate. This to me and to others can be seen as glamorising eating disorders, this is something I really don't want to do: I want to show the effects of what an eating disorder does but not by showing off my subjects body or exploiting her privacy in that way. I wanted to show the other effects, the mental effects of an eating disorder but not like others have tried to do with the cheesy tape measure images and pieces of paper they've written themselves in two minutes saying things like "I won't eat","never going to be perfect" which was another type of images I found whilst looking for sources- these people tried to approach a serious illness and photograph they're very own opinion of what it might be like for people suffering with an eating disorder- they did no real research into eating disorders nor did they plan for the images. 

SOURCE FIVE:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/58603387@N02/sets/72157626898034002/

Another example of what I don't want my images to look like or be like. This person again, chose serious illnesses to portray and did it horrifically. Their images don't look like a series when there meant to be, it's not clear in the images what their communicating, it's not even clear that they was trying to portray multiple eating disorders without reading "the artist statement". In all honestly, the images look as if the're all random images that have being put together in the same album. 

SOURCE SIX:

http://www.rayspence.co.uk/gallery_378506.html

Ray Spence's project: "Anorexia Nervosa"documents his daughters fight with anorexia, based on her diary entries. I think this documention is staged but it's still a type of documenting so I picked this as a source. The images that ray spence took, are paired with his daughters hand written diary entries which on the online images I can't read- I don't know if the writting is readable on the real images but not being able to read the entries really effects the images because you can't understand what there supposed to represent/ you don't know the real meanign behind the images and with the entries being there, it make you want to know even more what they say. In this project, The subject is very aware of the photographers image taking- she's engaging with the camera in most images, to me this distracts from the impact of the images, making them seem faked in a way. The images are black and white and the only content in the images is the subject(minus one image) these two choices make the images stronger, seeing the subjects life in plain back and white and alone, creates empathy- the viewer starts to see the subject as a person who's in their own personal hell which they seemlingly can't escape.

SOURCE SEVEN:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7cUbTc-iGs

 "The Day To Day Life Of Albert Hastings" by Kaylynn Deveney.
One of the first things I noticed about this book was that the format(Square) of the images was the same format that I'm currently using for my documentary project and that is the first project/book I've come across that has had that in common. The images aren't all square formatted, there are a few images through out which are landscape and printed across two full pages. The book also includes what looks like scanned in old images which belong to the subject, which are the format of which the images or documents are, they've not being cropped of changed in any form I can see. The image's colours are very neutral and mostly the images are very light and bright which creates a warm and clear feeling to the images. The book focuses on the subjects routines and general day to day life and matching with the content of the image: the book is layed out very balanced and clearly ordered and to match the clean feeling to the images the book is also set out very clean and clearly. Again, with the book been about routines one very particular routine is highlighted by two images, next to each other sat separately on their own pages- for us to compare and see what's changed  and stayed the same in the scene.

This book like source one, two and six also features captions and like source six they are hand written by the subject, but unlike the other sources I've found the captions are comments that the subject has made about the images: commenting himself about what he's doing, what the image is showing or just giving some information about why the image is important to the project(an opinion of his favourite flowers) and like source one this book contains images of notes that the subject as made as well. It seems that in order to communicate more information or communicate the perspective of the subject- these photographers have chosen to add literal insights from the subjects- making the project more personal, also making the subjects more real and breaching that connection between the subject and the viewer. The variety of images, content and aspects that the book gives is a really nice balance and really communicates the subjects life and the fact that we're only seeing this little section of it and there's so much that we haven't seen, so many people and stories that came before the moments the photographer is documenting and to match this feeling there's the fact that only the images that Deveney took are commented on by the subject and all the old images are comment-less, the viewers have no idea what these pictures are or mean, or who they're of, the viewers are left guessing and questioning at these un-explained images and this is what the book is basically trying to do- we don't know this persons life, there's so much we don't know but yet where seeing these images which show you closely what the subjects life is like at that current point.
The images are completely centred on the subject- there's only one images in the whole book that features other people and even in that image there's no faces within it.

The images as a whole very stand back-ish. There's obviously a close and comfortable relationship between the subject and the photographer but Deveney chose to observe the subject, having no involvement within the scenes which is really what I aiming for; that kind of unawareness and I want to be able to blend into the background, letting the subject act completely natural. There is a mix of locations and feelings with the images; some have a feeling of loneliness and sadness where as other have a feeling of happiness, just generally being cheerful as to suggest that the subject himself is very happy go lucky and there is also a mix of  face without, face included in images.

This book made me realise that in both the books I've looked at now, They include a section/s of text which explain the project, the relationship they have with the subject etc and This is something I will have to consider when making my book, having this section of information is important but these people we're giving the subjects identity away when photographing them, where as my subjects face is barely ever seen in the images that will be used in my book.