Not going to let a little rain spoil my parade….

Motherhood

Family Kitchen

Here's some from my experiment the other day. I converted them to black and white because I felt that the colors were too distracting. I especially like the top one as a family portrait. In these pictures I played with the gaze - switching photographers and rules and keeping the subject not quite sure what was happening - all the while taking pictures. I tightened the restrictions as the exercise continued.

As I move on, I'm going to focus on pictures of different families and see how the work continues to progress.

New Directions

A week has gone by since residency and I've taken on a new direction with my work. Think I need to review where I've gone through this whole process. My work started with "kitsch" and "sentimentality".  I was designing things to be pretty. When I applied to grad school my incoming portfolio was kind of a documentary, performance hybrid. After this I decided to tackle images of a mother/daughter relationship struggle for power and understanding. I resorted to props and got too literal and into the use of metaphors. During this time I experimented with collage. For the next semester I started taking apart my father's street photography and snapshot work and put it into a collage with a social justice focus. I decided to be more direct but again crossed the too literal and metaphoric line. In addition, I started doing my own street photography and enjoyed catching things in the moment. Now after the fourth residency I'm again picking up my camera to combine all that I have learned throughout the program.

I am
1. Using some of my father's snapshots and street photography in the body of work, but using it as it stands.
2. Using my own sensibilities as a portrait photographer. But blurring lines.
3. Using my newfound love of street photography, but again blurring lines.
4. Using my collage sensibilities in a more curatorial form.

I'm focusing on "the gaze" and the family in the form of a portrait/snapshot blur. Taking into account some of my father's work, a family history, the family album or archive and joining it all into a body of work.