My initial idea evolved around concert photography and live performances. I wanted to capture the thrill of the artist whilst performing in front of hundreds or thousands of fans. There's something special about every performance, as none of them are the same. It is close to imposible to do the same show twice. A series of tutorials helped me reach the conclusion that such a project would not be strong enough and therefore I had to keep looking for ideas.
Another idea which at the time seemed interesting, was focusing on the sound technicians present at each live performance. They are key characters when it comes to the quality of sound heard by the audience. So I thought, why not photograph them? I had never seen such a project before and tried it out. Again, after meeting with tutors and showing them the route I was going on, the conclusion was similar to the first scenario. The images lacked consistency and did not work well as a series.
Back to the drawing board to look for more research!
What has the next stop with regards to the concept seeking process?
Well, the idea of absorption caught my interest when I first say Bill Henson's Paris Opera series. It was presented to us during a lecture related to stage photography. The moment I saw it, something happened. The images were absolutely beautiful. They reflected the people in the audience present at the Opera shows in Paris. Most of the subjects are unaware that they are being photographed and that adds mystery and depth to the project. It is shot on analogue and therefore, has a special feeling to it. The shades of blue, the shadows created by the long exposure and moving subject contributes to the overall atmosphere. What more can I say? I wanted to try and recreate his work in my own way.
This is by far my favorite image of the series.
After determinig what my focus point would be, the next step was to get in touch with Opera Theatres in order to gain access to locations and shows. That proved to be harder that I expected. I got no answers whatsoever from some of the venues I contacted and from the ones who did respond, the answers were negative because they feared that I would be intrusive to the audience. That wouldn't have been the case but since I did not get a chance to explain what my idea was, I had to give up. When I went back to Romania in December 2012 I managed to go to a show at the Opera Thater and take my camera with me as well. That was my very first attempt to recreated Bill Henson's work. There were some challanges I faced because in order to avoid people seeing me take pictures of them, I had to make use of the live-view sensor on my camera in order to frame and focus the shot.
It did not go well every time and I got some out of focus photographs. The amount of available light was also reduced so that did help me too much either.
These are the images I got from the shoot at the Opera Theater in Brasov. Definitely not strong enought to be part of my MPP.
Another idea was to photograph different kinds of audiences so I tried doing so at a gig in Folkestone, at the Quarterhouse. The type of music played at the event was electro music so they target audience was quite different to that of the opera.
Things just weren't looking good at all at that point!
I hadn't managed to find my project to work on and the search was becoming slightly more stressful.
At some point, a family trip to Portugal should have taken place but due to circumstances out of my control that didn't happen. If I went to Lisabon my aim was to photograph people looking at art and being absorbed by it. Not the case, unfortunately.
Going back to Romania and shooting more images of the audience at the Opera Theatre appeared to be my only option, which would save my project. That was the plan: shoot and get this project done.
However, there was a tiny little detail which changed everything. It's something known as chicken pox. Yeah, tough luck ain't it? I returned to Romania on 27th March and on 1st April found out that I have chicken pox. Long story short, I wasn't allowed to leave the house for 10 days. All I had to was stay at home, sleep and wait for the disease to do its thing and then go away. Sounds easy enough, right? Not when you have a photographic project to complete. Interactione with other people was also out of the question because the disease is contagious.
Chicken pox is not fun to get along with, that's for sure. It made me want to sleep all day long, gave me fever and the desire to do nothing but watch tv. One morning I woke up and my head was burning. It was like I had taken a nap in the oven, which I had turned on. Not the nicest of feelings.
However, fever might have trigerred some sort of weird mechanism in my brain which lead me to a slightly unusual idea for my project. I began by re-reading the information about absorption and theory of flow. That's how I came across the mental state diagram containing 8 different stages our mind can experience. They are flow, boredom, arousal, anxiety, apathy, worry, control and relaxation.
That diagram certainly hit a sensitive chord because my whole project is based on it.
I began to ask myself questions such as: "What makes me bored/aroused/relaxed/worry/etc" and of course, provide answers. It's something I wouldn't normally think about on a regular basis but this was an exception. As soon as I found answers I though about translating them into visual information. My best shot was to focus on objects as symbols.
Okay then, what now? I had the objects as answers and the questions which formed an interesting dialogue. The only thing I didn't have was an image to reflect the questions. Then it hit me! I was gonna make a self portrait! But not just any self portrait, because my face was nowhere near presentable. Best solution? Cover my face but still reflect me as a person. The object of choice was an old computer screen which played the role of my mind on which different mental states are displayed and transmitted to the rest of the body. I wanted to create a dynamic self portrait so I moved the screen whilst exposing the image. The result is interesting from my point of view and goes well with the concept. The final 10 images contain 2 collages of 8 images and 8 diptychs. The effect I am aiming to create is that of a puzzle. The viewer sees the two collages and then moves along to observe the diptychs. By the time he reaches the last image, he might have to go back to the collages to re-observe them. I hope by that time the puzzle would have unfolded and the even a tiny bit of the concept is understood.
Last thing I'd like to specify about this project is the title. HODIE SUM. What does that mean? It's the Latin phrase meaning TODAY I AM. I do hope I have managed to spark people's interest regarding the project and maybe, just maybe, they shall have a look at the 10 images.
Any extra information about this project, the relationship between photography and psychology and how the creative process unfolded can be found by accessing the links in this critical journal blog.
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