Final 5 Images

Evaluation

I decided to evaluate the images as a whole not as individuals. They do not work on their own as the narrative runs through all 5 images and you don't really get the story if you don't see them all together. For this brief we were asked to create people in an image and for my narrative i decided to create 5 lives / people using only the items they had with them when they died. Now these people are completely fictional, i have created every one of them but my viewers do not know this, as far as they are aware all five of these images represents someone. Each image represents someones life and their whole existence has been condensed into a little plastic bag full of worthless items.

Visually the images are very striking, the strong harsh lighting and the strong contrast makes for a harsh image. I did not really intend for the images to be this harsh it is just how they turned out, I cannot envision them any other way. I think the harshness came from the poignant nature of the subject, even though the people are fictional the subject is real. If that makes sense. These bags are real for some people and if you are unlucky enough to have to receive one you would know just how awful it is to hold that particular persons life if a little paper bag. It is an incredibly sad thing and I think it needed a dark harsh image to put across that sadness.

To me they almost look like evidence photographs. The harsh light from a desk lamp maybe and the photographs will be filed away in a storage unit somewhere. It is the clean precise way that the items have been presented that makes it seem that way it looks like something that is an official documentation or record. This is a quality that I like, it makes them slightly cold and impersonal which i like. I don't know why I like them cold and impersonal I just do. I think it makes the subject easier to discuss the less personal it is.

I have definitely achieved what I set out to achieve, I wanted images that build the framework of a person yet still let the viewers fill in the blanks. I wanted to see what kind of crazy scenarios that people come up with. People tend to be very open to suggestion when asked what may have happened in a situation so I want to see if the subtle hints I have put into my images have indeed influenced what they think of the scenario and the people.

Every image represents a different person, they have a story, they had a life. In the images I have given clues to their story and what they were like and how they lived their lives and also how they ended up with their life in a paper bag. I want people to make that story up for themselves.

I shot all the images in basically the same way to keep things uniform, to keep the images looking like they belong together. I have noticed with some work that the images were so different from each other that you didn't quite get that they were in the same series or the same story. I wanted them to be instantly recognisable as a narrative and as a set of images. It makes it easier to understand.

Finally I am very happy with the images that I have produced I

think that they work very well together and fulfil the brief that was set. They work excellently together as a series of images and achieve and convey exactly what I set out to.