Stephie contacted me few months ago about collaborate shoot and she wants me to be the stylist, after forming ideas we set the concept and build the team by finding model and MUA. I’m in charge of finding the room in university for white background and booking light and contact designer to borrow garments.

The shoot finally happened on Thursday this week, I had a bit of trouble before as the room we want can’t be book because fine art course has assessment that day so we need to change to fashion critic room 144. Also the designer I need garments just move away from Brighton so I have to book a first class Royal Mail post to get the garments on time. The model was a bit late due to her personal stuffs, but in the end we made it work. The shoot went very well and we did 3 looks in total, lots of cool pose have been made. Everyone did a great job and contribute their best for the shoot. I’m looking forward to see the final result since we shot on film so it will take a bit of time to develop.

The experience has allowed me to work in the photoshoot in a team, sourced people and clothes, made some contacts with tutors and designers; which is very helpful for my FMP work in the future as I want to do more collaboration shoots.

Please have a look at Instagram account @stephwright.photog and @maispace.101 for the final results

On Tuesday, I had my last tutorial with Emma, I brought the styling zine I assembled yesterday and we had a look at it together. I explained that uni print lab doesn’t do wire binding but the outside print service charge too high so I do the wire by myself but it looks not very clean. Emma suggested me some print service and advised that I should think about my budget and printing options if I want to continue with this binding for my FMP.

We talked a little bit about the statement of intents, which Emma break it down very easy to understand. Now I also have to prepare 10-12 slide for my last presentation on Tuesday. Emma advised me that I should bring my physical work to the presentation day so tutor can have a look at it.

I then later on got some ring hook from amazon and I started to connect them together to create the binding which I found easier to flip.

I have finish my styling zine which only 6 pages, i still have some images to do more pages but I set my budget limit so here is some pages I really like and I decided to print them. I added extra front and last page with Tracing print paper in order to make them more interesting. I print them in A5 size as I feel like this size is very handy and easy to put in your pocket to carry around.

To be honest I come to print lab this morning feeling very stressful, I’m afraid that my work are too simple or unprofessional compare to my other friend experiments. I plan to some actual shoot too but for later on cause I want to carefully plan what meal first then I will style an outfit follow the colour palette or texture of that meal. I will need time to do that so I probably working more on editorial shoot next year.

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Since my project include cyanotype editing, I want to attend this workshop to understand more about the process of cyanotype. The workshop started with overall history, different material and liquid to make cyanotype and heath and safety. Then Rachel show us step by step of the process, I’ve been using darkroom for Photogram workshop and the Sustainable workshop last week as well so I quite familiar with it. Then we can start creating our test strip and our own image.

I brought my film negative which has my own image but unfortunately it was a colour film so it didn’t work well in the cyanotype, however, it still left a nice mark on it.I had so much fun organise and rising the paper out in the water. I also experiment with timing, I left them 4 mins under the UV light then I change object and left for 4 more mins for have the different print on the paper.

I got 3 of them in total but I will let them dry and collect them next week. It will be hard to work with bigger object such as fruit, vegetable because the UV light was too strong for them, so it might be with the normal sunlight.

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I attended the workshop today by Simon Sandys who showing us the large format photography and use of darkroom, especially how we can develop film by natural source. For this workshop we used mint what Simon had collected before, we did some mixing with other ingredients resulted in the liquid around 25 degree to use for developing film. Simon introduced us with the two large format camera that I’ve never seen before. It was informative to know more about different camera, for this camera we can see the reverse image in front of the screen. Lots of manual things to do with this camera rather than the digital camera that I usually use.

Working in large format camera need a lot of attention: putting paper into the camera, take out the paper, carefully develop them in the mixed liquid and dry them and them print them out.

We had a chance to take turn taking picture and develop it in the darkroom to get the negative then the final result. The process was interesting but it takes lots of time. I enjoyed the workshop and found it enhance my knowledge about film photography and the use of darkroom. However, I don’t see I would use this technique in my project now.

This week I was quite sick and I had to attend the tutorial on Teams. The tutorial last week was quite informative and push me to do more experimentation with my work. I have focus on editing the pic of myself and editing in Cyanotype effect, then I started print them out and collaging them. I was having lots of fun in the library doing the cut out and collaging images. I was reading the article about diaspora students and how their identities keep construct and reconstruct, so I found cut out and collaging different pieces of my own images is a way to visualise that ideas.

Last week when Emma looking at my cutout experimentation she recommended me to look at futurism. I went to Tate Britain and I actually saw some of the artworks. They all look amazing but it doesn’t really allign with my works and I don’t want to complicated my collages.

So far I was enjoy doing the styling book since styling is what I’m truly interested in. And I excited to see how I can make more editorial shoots in the future, I found so many fashion designers in London that I want to collaborate, but other thing I need to consider is the budget. Time flies so fast that we nearly finish this module, in the journey of researching and creating I did found lots of things interesting but also sometimes I feel drained and lose creativity.That’s why I hope I can be more active on the styling/art direction on process of creating my FMP

We talked about what can I continue for my FMP and what my ambition in the future. These question really hard for me, as an international student after a placement I found like it so much harder to work in creative side of fashion. I might able work at retail or business side of it. If I want to stay in the UK longer, I need a company that sponsor me so I can stay and work for 5 years, these visa limitation somehow really affect my ambition. I know I always love making images, and want to work in a team for a photoshoot project or film project, realistically I can’t see any future of working in creative fashion in the UK for me. However, I can’t let that interrupt my creativity with my FMP. I will continue with producing a visual book focusing on styling and art director position which will allow me to collaborate with other creatives.

Last week, I spent few days in London for work and I spent some time after work to visit small exhibitions that I found on Art website.

First one is IDENTITY: Past, Present, Future with multiple small artist. I had a small chat with an artist who loves drawing anime characters and going to publish his first comic book next year. It was great to understand the insight of the artist works and chat about the creative industry. There was one artist that using cyanotype for expressing her identity, and she layered object in her work which really inspired me to do the same. Also there was an artist who but hamburger object in the resin which was very cool as well

Second I found was Disturbing Darlings, it was a very small exhibition but it was so cute. It reflects on the current trend of seeking escapism in cutesy imagery or objects. It also explore the power of art and humour to make our fears more manageable. All the objects in the exhibition were so cute and I love the display of them.

I missed my tutorial last week since I was working for Veronica Beard to help source out their sample storage. However, I did email Emma about things I’ve been reading and doing. For this week, I came to show her some experiments that I did since then. Showing her the mix media images that I made, Emma gave me really nice feedback about this work and she suggested me to do more experiment with this mix media to my own images. She also suggest me the IKEA cookbook that contains lots of flat lay and nice organization of food which very inspiring for me.

I was showing her some experiment with Cyantope with my own images, since I focus on culture identity of international student through fashion and food now, I choose myself as a main figure. I asked my boyfriend to take some pic of me in the pier, showing the silhouette and the background of the sea. I’m then doing cyanotype editing on photoshop. Emma suggested that I can playing around with editing or mix media for this images. That sounds very cool and I’m excited to try that out.

For the academic reading, I was showing her some books I have read which is Fashion, Culture and Identities by Fred Davis and Fashion and Culture studies. Emma suggested me to put more annotation into what I have read. And suggest if I have any ideas coming from the books.

I was going to London this weekend to visit friends and museums. Fragile beauty at V&A museum is the exhibition that I’m excited to go since I’ve always enjoy photography and I want to explore more about photographers and their technique. The exhibition consisted of different room with different themes, I really enjoy walking around each room and looking at lots of picture surrounded me.

There are lots of nice black and white photo that having impressive contras. The use of shadow on the body is nicely planned and executed.

The exhibition is really helpful in case of inspiration and explore new artists. I definitely go back to same names I have taken photos for my visual research. I also noticed the way they organise light in order to highlight the title on the wall. It makes the word more easy to read as well as co-ordinate with the lighting in the exhibition.

On Tuesday i had tutorial with Emma in which i found it very helpful to chat about what ive done and some of my experience. We were talking about the interview I did with my mom to understand more about her background and her memories food. I also did interview with my other Vietnamese friend about food and her style developed. I did my interpretation on her comfort food to understand more of her story.

I showed Emma the styling flip book i made even though it just in 2 pages but Emma gave me positive feedback on this and looking forward for me to develop this. She also recommended me for the instagram account that compare styling runway piece with nature. I found this pretty similar to what Im doing in term of colour and texture between clothe and food. She brought me some books which have beautiful images about nature and conceptual images about body. Eventhough, i don’t have access to the Ede tribe stuffs, these books inspired me that i can do in my own interpretation for example the colour in Ede clothing, the texture and details, etc. The magazine Emma gave me The book of Kin and other magazine that are about heritage which give me more insight and what i should continue doing. I will definitely find more books to read about things related to my topic and help me firgure out my statement of intent. Overall, this tutorial went very nice and I would need to find some academic reading.