My first shoot, I created a ‘dystopian’ still life scene. By collecting different props such as candles, flowers, a distorted screen and crystals; I placed them all together to see what perception of a story I could create. I also experimented with different coloured lights to change the ambience of the scene. This portrayed a different sense of feeling within the story and some of the objects appeared differently than when I had normal lighting.
Taking some photo inspiration from Pinterest, I created this Mood Board to help inspire me for my Still Life shoot. I wanted the theme to be spiritual yet slightly dystopian with different hues of colours. Tones such as pink and purple with a vibrance to represent how my brain wants to perceive certain things.
I decided to take another trip to Preston Park Gardens and use my 35mm camera. I feel that this experimentation was successful, and my film camera has presented these images in a more mystical way. I carried on with taking photographs of what caught my eye and really focused on the detail of each object. This is because I was interested in how I was perceiving things on this day and how certain things were shaped and coloured and how they had changed.
Some of my first initial research was going for a walk around Preston Park Gardens to capture anything that caught my eye. As I went around, I was surprised at how much detail I could see and how intricate every bit of nature was. This inspired me to think about detail, textures and colours within my work. Further on in my work, I have used the flowers to collage as I thought they had interesting patterns and detail.
In this series of 4 images I have created, I decided to keep a diary of my dreams. This is because I was fascinated with what takes place within the brain when you are sleeping. From these dreams, I then created images in which I thought represented and analysed what had happened in this dream. It is a mix of a hand-drawn picture, Photoshop collage and hand-made collages.
Doing some further research I came across this book called Dream, Phantasy and Art by Hannah Segal. This book was intriguing because it stated some psychological processes that psychologists have concluded. It stated that some forms are linked to emotions which make us react to produce creatively and this is the experience that is an object in which reality has given us.
The Psychology of Imagination by Jean-Paul SatreThe Psychology of Imagination by Jean-Paul Satre
Doing further explorations of some books, I found the Psychology of Imagination by Jean-Paul Satre a psychoanalysis. In this book he was exploring how we perceive an object and whether this is just a mental image in our head. Can this be distorted when re-imagining this image. It also talks about consciousness, that we have 3 different forms: perceive, conceive, imagine. So when we perceive an object we are observing, but only at one sector at a time, so as a result, there is a possibility it may change position. Therefore, we learn the object and make a picture in our mind of how it is.
I thought that this would be good a starting point in my initial research. This is because exploring the theme of spirituality and how the brain functions is about how different people perceive certain things. Two people could have a different perception of the exact same thing.
When I went to the Tate Modern Gallery, there was a yoga display on featuring soldiers practicing different yoga movements. A Puerto-Rico based artist duo Allora and Calzadilla, have worked together to explore subjects such as geopolitics and power relations. In this work, 3 uniformed performers move through a cycle of 3 ‘warrior’ yoga poses which combine strength, balance and tenacity. In this work, they portray spiritual and meditative behaviour. This work also explores the difference between these military and non-military worlds and how yoga and mindfulness is used as part of their combat training.
This relates to my work as I want to explore different ways of mindfulness and how practicing mindfulness can change your perception of things within your day to day life.
