Establishing an audience was important for me to include in my sketchbook because I needed to distinguish real personas in order to solidify a specific audience. Before doing this I was running off my own experiences with the issues I discus. Now, I am able to relate different aspects to different areas of life and see how my work will impact young women. I am aware that my audience may change moving forward with this project and I am open to this change.

Throughout my research I have established that collaboration is a necessity for interesting projects in 2021. I would love my publication to be a mixture of my own self-directed work and some directed work with other people involved. I have shown my interests in collaborating with small businesses and struggling fields of work by cause of the pandemic. I think this will be extremely engaging and interesting to read and view. I explored this thought in my shoot ‘struggling arts’ where I sent a disposable camera into dance studios. I loved the idea that I getting images from places that I would never have been let in before rethinking my practice due to Covid.

It is important for me to understand themes and trends going in to 2021. I will be producing my final major project in this time period so I need to ensure the response is welcomed and therefore gains success. I have decided to include two WGSN reports to help my work steer towards key factors that will impact our lives. Future Innovations 2021 and Future Proofing Your Brand are both reports created to ensure businesses succeed in 2021. I learnt that collaboration across similar professions is key and will create interesting outcomes that may not have been possible in earlier years. I noted all the areas that I would need to invest in to stay relevant and form a readership.

I also established my love for styling pages and I believe that with the right content these pages will be important for any audience. Key these are self-care and self-investment which heavily relate to my work in attempting to abolish comparison culture and creating a positive space for women.

Overall, these reports helped me to understand what people want to be reading about and investing in, in 2021.

My next experiments will be a development on from my first thoughts stated in the blog post before this one. I have decided that I want my work to be reflective on the times that we are currently living through. The arts industry has faced a huge battle this year and I think collaboration is key to survival, as stated in my research on WGSN future innovations 2021.

Musical theatre is one of the most publicised area of the arts in the news at the moment. I have friends that are studying in this field so I thought it would be a great collaboration opportunity. Again, because of Covid I am not allowed to shoot them where I would like. To solve this I sent a disposable camera into their studios and asked them to shoot the behind the scenes to what they are going through. Once reflecting on this I found that actually I might get the unpoised natural images that I wish for. The fact that they dont have the pressure of someone alien coming into their space and that they can just get on like normal will create honesty.

As I have previously discussed I decided to do a Covid friendly shoot with disposable cameras. This year has bought many challenges to us students, so I decided to adapt working practices to allow me tom produce content that was interesting. With current restrictions I would struggle finding models and locations and this would reflect in the outcome. My idea was to utilize disposable cameras and bring them to places that I would never have access to.

I am happy with my original plans and ideas although I think in the timeframe that I was given it is hard to communicate with others to get my goals achieved.  It also took a lot of control out of my hands, which meant I had to trust people I did not know and trust that the camera not be under exposed (which it was).

I encountered problems with working with people that I did not know so I decided to refine my original thoughts. I decided to investigate sending cameras to people that I would trust more and therefore have more control and a greater likelihood of success.

 

When experimenting with bleaching photographs I realised that the negative space left behind from the bleach could be an interesting layout for a publication and articles. Below are some of my experiments with laying out text. I really liked how these turned out and would like to continue this idea forward to my final major project.   

Whilst waiting for my disposable camera series I decided to experiment with digital photos and attempting to make them look as if they were taken on disposable cameras. The Photographer Matt Irwin often created photographs to look as if they were taken on a disposable camera. I started by fully submerging photographs in diluted bleach, which removed dark colours and brings forward red tones. The imperfect images looked as if they were taken on old film cameras which I liked. Although I did not have much control over how the end result turned out. To counteract this I decided to be more precise when placing the bleach onto the image. This meant I could decide myself what was removed and what was kept. I painted on straight bleach which fully removed pigmentation creating an interesting image as the bleach removed some context. I decided to further refine this skill by experimenting with pouring bleach down the image and using clear nail vanish to protect the bits I wanted to keep. These images are some of my favourite experiments. There is something nice about removing the predictability in which we get with digital photographs. Removing parts of images changed the narrative of the photo which allows a viewer to pause and look at the image a little longer. I would like to develop these experiments further by introducing text and layout themes. Below are some of my experiments, the full series are in my sketchbook.    

After researching Jo Spence’s work I came up with a plan to experiment with her thought process. I want to showcase imperfect imagery that has a much more interesting narrative to the over posed content we see on social media.

I like the idea that with a disposable camera you cannot pose for the perfect picture. The user has no screen to view themselves and no way of checking the photo back. The photos produced from disposable camera are usually much more candid and imperfect. I decided to contact Instagram influencers and ask if they would help me with this project. I sent them a disposable camera in the post and asked them to shoot the times of the day that they usually wouldn’t post. It is completely up to them on what they shoot but I asked for the content to be related to the reality of being a women in todays society.

I think the results will be an interesting juxtaposition to their Instagram pages and I hope to inspire them to post raw content. This is acting as a test shoot and idea for my final major project so I can change any variables that maybe do not work.

I have not received any cameras back yet so I do not know the results.

Following on from my idea for creating a magazine that empowers women I decided to look at the photographer Jo Spence. I managed to access an archive of her work from the University of Birbeck in London. Spence did not use the word feminist to describe herself but instead called herself a ‘cultural snipper’. She used her camera to shoot and expose issues in culture. I am particularly interested in her work which targets the medias representation of women where she discovered that females are always coded as “young, plucked and perfectly made up” – Jo Spence.

I admire how she challenged the norms of representations and produced work which was relatable and does not hide the truth.

“I think the problem with photography as it stands now is that when we look at a picture of ourselves we try and make it do too much work. I think the whole of our society tries to push us to a notion of coherence in who we are” – Jo Spence.

Spence started to look at family albums and open the album to things that are normally excluded. She added bad photos, photos taken late at night when she’s tired and a photo that had been used for an insurance claim where her face was singed in an accident at home.

I was immediately hit with the thought that in our society we are extremely photo and selfie obsessed. Now more than ever we are able to pose to get the perfect image which can be retouched and positioned to imply we have a perfect life. Spence hated the way the media represented women but I can relate this to how Instagram uses pose for their ‘perfect’ image.

 

After my first tutorial I quickly realised that I was not happy with the idea of workwear as a main theme for my project. I have built on this idea by researching how the fashion industry has been effected by Covid 19. Initially I was interested in how workwear had changed since the pandemic hit but I am now building on that idea into other aspects of change.

Throughout my research I investigated how publications are producing work with strict government restrictions. I found that professionals were investing in fashion illustration, creative bubbled households and socially distant photoshoots. I truly admire how magazines have changed in the last few months, they have managed to stay relevant by showcasing what really matters in this new world and have created content that is sensitive to the current pandemic.

I think it would be interesting to bring to light the struggles that we faced as women throughout the pandemic. I envision a magazine of some sort that openly addresses issues such as mental health, body image and highlights the reality and craziness that this past year has brought.