In response to the reading In Plato’s Cave by Susan Sontag I took a lot of inspiration for my own project. Susan talks about photography being like a memoir and giving us a sense of nostalgia. I like the idea of photography being like a memory and a way to freeze a moment in time. We use photos often to capture moments in the past which we want to remember, ‘It is a nostalgic time right now, and photographs actively promote nostalgia’ (Sontag 1977:15). I plan to use this in my project to carefully think  about what I am photographing and why. Susan also goes on to say, ‘To take a picture is to have an interest in things as they are, in the status quo remaining unchanged (at least for as long as it takes to get a “good” picture), to be in complicity with whatever makes a subject interesting, worth photographing’ (Sontag, 1977: 12). This made me think about why I want to photography my family and why they are worth photographing. My family reflect my sense of place and I want to portray that in my work, not just take ordinary pictures of my family but really capture the meaning behind my sense of place and how my family fit into that.

In response to the brief, I have been thinking about the idea of sense of place and what this means to me. For me sense of place is like a sense of belonging. Where I feel the most at home and the most comfortable being me. Family is one of the most important things in my life and I don’t believe I would feel so at home in Bristol or in our house without them being there. This is why for my project I want to photograph my family in our home in Bristol. To do this I plan on taking a camera home over the Christmas break and photographing my family while I am home from uni. To prepare for this, I will be researching photographers who photograph their family and looking at different way in which I can really capture the essence of my family and our home.