Below are some of the illustrations from my sketchbook that I think are really important pieces of evidence of my creative journey in this project. I think it demonstrates my initial perception of topics and imaging- much more truthful than writing ect. I did however really try and experiment with my

We underwent some test shoots to see how the images would look on screen. We did an accidental test shoot on the skater images; as we were not totally satisfied with the first shoot. I also took some film images to get some versatility in shoots- and see if the skater look shot better in film. This didn’t happen on the grunge images so decided to use the original images as we were happy with the outcome. For the cholo shoot I practised during tattoos on myself and photographed the outcome- I think this was also important to do because there was a chance the ‘tattoos’ might have looked realistic in person, but very fake on camera (thankfully they didn’t).

(I,O: Test shoots for skater, disposables and tattoos)

Choosing three from the six subcultures my partner and I researched was quite easy and simple. We had both unintentionally looked at skater culture (presumably because it is one of the biggest current subcultures) so chose to keep this one. We decided to each pick one of our own to add the mix; so my partner chose ‘Grunge’ as she relieved she had a lot of prior knowledge on the scene, while I chose Latin American Gangsters because I found this subculture to be the most interesting and different.

We started planning our shoots straight away so that we could do them before the Christmas break as it would have been difficult to meet up at home and also it gave us maximum time to work on post production of the images, our presentation and sketchbooks.

The three subcultures I chose to research and investigate were Skater culture, Androgyny and the Latin American gangsters/ ‘Cholo’ scene. I think there are all subcultures that have differences and similarities. While they identify and stereotypically are born from different backgrounds (for example Androgyny being closely linked to the music industry, and ‘Cholo’ negatively rooting to gang culture), they have all been looked down on by society at some point. I think this is very interesting and means that society deems anything that strays from ‘normal’ as wrong and poisoned.

I started off this project by mind-mapping and mood-boarding to help visualise my initial thoughts, as well as progressively researching the different possible paths to go down.

For mood-boards: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/azragenevieve/

I next looked at different photographers and stylists that focus in on these subcultures for inspiration; to see how they portrayed this collective of people. I found many interesting artists such as Robert Yager,…..

Something that really helped my creativity in this project was comparing the history of the subcultures to what they are now. This gave me a lot of depth and understanding of what these collectives really portray and do in society.