Thursday 25 August 2011

Self Portrait 
For the self portrait summer project I wanted to portray travel and personality rather than just transient possessions. The idea for this outcome came from having to sofa hop for a month or two after loosing my college flat and just waiting until I could travel to London to stay with my brother and then Switzerland to see my parents, it was in this period that I realised how few belongings I actually needed, so this is why I only chose a hand full of things, things which I think play a very prominent role in my life. I looked at a few artists and photographers before taking this photo to come up with an idea how to go about getting this outcome, a moment of clarity and inspiration for this outcome came from the photographer Jeff Wall, I admired how in many of his photos the background plays a huge role as well as the focus in the foreground. In Walls pieces like the ' A ventriloquist at a birthday party in October 1947 1990' and  'After 'Invisible Man' by Ralph Ellison, the Prologue 1999–2000' the story and the conversation with the viewer isn't necessarily through the objects in focus or where the eye takes you but all around. This is why I chose to take the photo overlooking a fairly spectacular landscape.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/harry-scott/sets/72157627514631680/detail/  Workings and experiments