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What does this word make me think about?

Memory

Life experience

Knowledge

Skills

Passage of time

Work experience

Interests

Spiritual experience

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What does this word make me think about?

Virtual reality

Should we question reality?

Everyone has different realities

Reality TV shows or documentaries

Sense of reality, what makes this?

Grounded in reality

AI and another version of reality

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What does this word make me think about?

Lifestyle change

Radical change

Unexpected change

Transformation

Change - for the better or worse?

Physical change

Diet or workout change

Change of clothes

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I took this photograph during my dad & step mums (Lisa) rehearsal. I have cropped it slightly so that their figures are more central, and I also wanted to play around with the black and white filter for a few shots.

Some elements that I like in particular are how the light is reflecting off of Lisa's trousers. I also really like how the wires are surrounding them at the bottom and right hand side. The two look focussed/engrossed in this image, so I feel this is a good observational, candid shot.

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I chose this image due to the reflection of the clouds, the bright colours, and the framing. I also noticed that there may be some leading lines within this image.

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This is another observational photograph from the rehearsal. I chose this image because I enjoy how each person in the image is differently engrossed in what they are doing. I also cropped the image slightly to bring all three people in more centrally, and adjusted the highlights in Adobe Lightroom.

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Week 1 Research Task - Reflecting on Observational Photo - Abstract

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Week 1 Research Task - Reflecting on Observational Photo - Abstract

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What do you see in this photograph?

In these images, I see an abstract display of human identity and experience. In this image in particular I see an inspiring and honest display of femininity. The image is powerful in my opinion. I really like the inventive inclusion of this image as the photographer is exhibiting how hair is important to each person and how it is used as an expression of identity, lifestyle, or political views.

Which Formal Elements seem important? How would you describe the lines in this picture? The shapes/forms? The colours/tones? The textures and patterns?​

The zebra print background contrasts against the beige skin of the subject, and the light green 'Western Girl' slogan across the baby pink underwear. The curved shape of the black lines in the backdrop against the curved shape of the subjects hips and thighs work together - the textures within the picture look soft, feminine and natural.

Which part of the photograph strikes you as most interesting - captivating, surprising, puzzling, mysterious? Why?
My eye is drawn to the centre of the image wherein we can see the model's pubic hair outside of the underwear. I think this is because I am used to not seeing pubic hair on underwear or swimwear adverts in my day to day life, so my eye is naturally drawn to this as it is different. I think that this is what makes the image interesting though as this would be relatable to a lot of viewers and this makes the image stand out as it goes against patriarchal expectations.

What do you think other people would say about this work? Why do you think that?
I think that this image could potentially be quite divisive and some viewers would see this display of the pubic hair as offensive, 'dirty' or 'unnatural,' however others may see this image as empowering, or may feel completely neutral about the image. It would depend on the cultural position of the viewer as well as perhaps their stance on feminism, their sexuality, or possibly religious views.

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At Museum Folkwang, GROW IT, SHOW IT! investigates the relationship between hair, identity and gender performance across cultures. Spanning 150 years of photographic history, from Victorian cartes de visite to TikTok screenshots, the exhibition presents hair as both personal expression and a political symbol. Drawing on lived experience and cultural movements – feminism, queer identity, civil rights, and post-colonial struggles – Song Tae Chong charts the shifting significance of hair over the course of time.

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This final image was chosen from a few that I took in this setting. This one in particular stood out to me as I feel it has some leading lines - the pole on the left hand side, and the trees lined along the other side of the river. I think the image is also scenic, colourful and calming.

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Week 1 Research Task - Reflecting on Observational Photo Projects - People

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Week 1 Research Task - Reflecting on Observational Photo Projects - People

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What words would you use to describe this photograph?
Distortion, identity, humanity and reality.

What does this photograph remind you of?

This group of photographs is reminiscent to me of what we see when looking on Google maps, except the blurred/stretched effect is deliberate.

What questions would you ask the artist about this work, if s/he were here?
I would ask the artist what inspired them to create the piece as I think it is incredibly interesting and creative.

What do you think is worth remembering about this photograph?
That creative minds can make anything artistic; this idea would have perhaps been hard to achieve or see in an artistic light, but it works. The images are calming, interesting, and make me think about human nature.

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On the evocative power of blur

Mame-Diarra Niang's Remember to Forget, on view until recently at the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation in Paris, upends traditional norms of photographic representation. Through the abstraction of Black bodies and the evocative power of blur, Niang navigates the boundaries between visibility and opacity, pulling viewers into a dreamlike space where identity is self-imagined, and complexity resists reduction. Drawing on the works of Fred Moten, Édouard Glissant, Tebogo George Mahashe, and others, Taous Dahmani reflects on her visit to the exhibition.

Taous Dahmani | Exhibition review | 23 Jan 2025

In recent years, as I meandered through the labyrinthine corridors of contemporary art fairs, I found myself consistently drawn to the vibrant, blurred compositions of Mame-Diarra Niang. Within the abstraction, laid the fleeting hint of portraits, only just discernible, prompting me to wonder what drove the French visual artist to craft images that deliberately resist representation. As I resumed my roving, the increasing power of the fog stayed with me: rising like an ocean within the growing tide of figuration. Haunted by the haze, I wondered about the spectacle of figuration and the capabilities of its refusal. Mame-Diarra Niang's blurring of black bodies functions as both an interpellation and an abstention - a diffuse energy and a dilution of sight; an exhaustion of the need to render muffled in a scream conveyed as a dream. The blur operates like a frequency, the capture of a spirit, the idea of magic. 'We are after the absolute presence of blur. Blueblackblur is our concern.' wrote African American poet and theorist Fred Moten ( Black and Blur, 2017). The blur functions like an eclipse, a shadow that alters clarity but leaves a luminous obscuration. The aesthetic strategies of Remember to Forget seem to enact a claiming of opacity.

During a grey November visit to Paris late last year, I had the opportunity to see Mame-Diarra Niang's first institutional exhibition in France, hosted at the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation. If you missed it, its footprint can be found in a rather unique artist book, of the same name, published by MACK, and a selection of Niang's works are also currently on display in Stevenson's Amsterdam gallery in an exhibition titled . As you stepped into the gallery, the bustling streets of Paris faded away, leaving Rue des Archives behind as you enter an exhibition space wished by Cartier-Bresson, which opened a year before his death in 2004. 20 years later, Niang's exhibition, curated by Clément Chéroux, unfolded across three spaces: a preliminary area that introduced the origins of the project and its initial experimental renditions, followed by the main gallery, where large-scale blurred portraits dominated. Finally, you entered a third room, its walls painted black, showcasing red, green, and blue stain-shaped photographic busts: the atmospheric condition of black by way of blur. The visit is an experiential journey through the intensification of abstraction, culminating in the vivid presence of what could be described as breathing auras. As you navigated these three spaces, the tetralogy, you venture to the edge of representation, encountering the blur as both a reverberation and a shield. In Mame-Diarra Niang's work, the surfaces of the photographic paper bear the traces of smudged ink, extending to the periphery of the print.

The visit triggers a lingering sensation, a sensory response. If the viewer's eye struggles to see clearly - not due to an irregularly shaped cornea - the exhibition invites us to engage other senses. What is absent from the image can instead be imagined, experienced or felt. Mame-Diarra Niang resists narration, not out of a lack of interest in storytelling - the poems scattered throughout the galleries attest to this - but as a defiance of explanation. I think: given the lasting damage photography has inflicted on the depiction of Black and Brown people, it's no wonder that the only solution is to reclaim it from any oppressive grasp or gaze. In the current global context, the spectacle of otherness is no solution. I remember: Édouard Glissant's chapter "For Opacity" in Poetics of Relation (1990).

Since the 1980s, and more so in the 1990s, French Caribbean ("Martiniquais") writer, poet, philosopher, and theorist Édouard Glissant articulated how for the West to understand those who is "different" to itself, it must grant the Other full transparency in order to then grant recognition of its existence. Glissant wrote that one not only has to agree 'to the right to difference but, carrying this further, agree also to the right to opacity that is not enclosure within an impenetrable autarchy but subsistence within an irreducible singularity,' adding 'to understand these truly one must focus on the texture of the weave and not on the nature of its components.'

Singularity is indeed at the core of Mame-Diarra Niang's Remember to Forget project, which can also be considered as self-portraits as noted the artist: "This series feels like the abstract idea that I have of myself." But the right to opacity is not a claim of silence, but a right to complexity against oversimplification, assumption, categorisation, 'reduction' to use another of Glissant's phrase. The bright vibration that make the multi-chromatic "portraits" state, via their texture, polymorphous identities, multiple, poetic and self-imagined selves. 'As far as my identity is concerned, I will take care of it myself. That is, I shall not allow it to become cornered in any essence,' wrote Glissant; whose words strike a chord in the context of France's imposition of universality and its refusal of difference, all under the banner of the French Revolution's motto: "Liberté, égalité, fraternité".

Drawing partly on Glissant, South African researcher and artist Tebogo George Mahashe frames this process of refusal as a challenge to the colonial fetishism of sight-based knowledge. Instead, he embraces the guidance of dreams' instruction, where their narrative remains open to interpretation. Finding the space of dreams more generative for understanding and representing the self, Tebogo George Mahashe also claims Glissant's opacity and explained: 'to insist on dreams and its practice as opaque texts - knowable only to the person who experienced the dream and practiced dreaming - is to refuse and reject colonialism's insistence on seizing every detail' (2020). The deformation of content, resulting from the blur, allows for an escape from the rigidity of the real, from the imposition of any authority. The blur is a dream that belongs only to the dreamer. One of the chapters of Mame-Diarra Niang's project is titled "Sama Guent Guii", which, translating from Wolof (Niang was raised across Senegal, the Ivory Coast and France), means : "this dream that I had." Remember to Forget then evokes an introspective journey, offering a dissolute form for the design of an inner landscape.

The contours of a dream are not photographic, yet if they were to be rendered through the medium of photography, they would undoubtedly be blurry, much like the dream itself and its lingering presence throughout the rest of our day. In one of Mame-Diarra Niang's report-poems, she states: 'We are never the same when we wake up.' Perhaps that's the sensation captured on the surface of Niang's photographs: a sfumato, a soft, gradual transition between the world of the sleepers and that of the awake. It is a hazy, smoky effect that functions both as mood and stance. As Moten once wrote. 'B is for blurr, for the seriality of an extra r, dividing movements like a fantasy, like Theaster Monk's mood.'♦

Mame-Diarra Niang: Remember to Forget ran at Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation until 5 January 2025.

is on at Stevenson Amsterdam until 22 February 2025.
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Taous Dahmani is a London-based French, British and Algerian art historian, writer and curator. Her expertise centres around the intricate relationship between photography and politics, a theme that permeates her various projects. She is an Associate Lecturer at London College of Communication, University of the Arts London. Dahmani's curatorial work was showcased at Les Rencontres d'Arles, France, where she curated the Louis Roederer Discovery Award (2022). In 2024 Dahmani curated exhibitions at Jaou Tunis, Tunisia; NŌUA, Norway; and Saatchi Gallery, London.
Images:

2-Mame-Diarra Niang, Continuefrom the series Call Me When You Get There. Courtesy Stevenson, Cape Town, Johannesburg and Amsterdam

3-Mame-Diarra Niang, Continuefrom the series Call Me When You Get There. Courtesy Stevenson, Cape Town, Johannesburg and Amsterdam
1000 Words favourites
5-Mame-Diarra Niang, Figure le moment qui précède, from the series Léthé. Courtesy Stevenson, Cape Town, Johannesburg and Amsterdam

10-Mame-Diarra Niang, Courtesy Stevenson, Cape Town, Johannesburg and Amsterdam

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Mame-Diarra Niang's Remember to Forget, on view until recently at the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation in Paris, upends traditional norms of photographic representation. Through the abstraction of Black bodies and the evocative power of blur, Niang navigates the boundaries between visibility and opacity, pulling viewers into a dreamlike space where identity is self-imagined, and complexity resists reduction.

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Week 1 Research Task - Reflecting on Observational Photo - Place

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Week 1 Research Task - Reflecting on Observational Photo - Place

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How would you describe this photograph to a person who could not see it?

I would describe it as a landscape image which includes juxtaposition between tall skyscraper buildings above and a demolished, muddy seaside brick stairway below. The middle section in between the two includes lush greenery, some residential buildings, and a statue. The image looks as though it was taken on a humid day as you can see a greyish blue wash of sky above.

Is this a naturalistic or abstract image?

This is a naturalistic image (as in, it is an image of a scenic landscape) but it highlights the difference between man made buildings and walls against the naturalistic green trees and grass. I always like images which hold these two in juxtaposition and have taken similar images in the past, of London skyscrapers against a park for example.

How has the flattening of space (3D to 2D) affected our view of the subject?
It makes the three sections of the images appear more layered - the first (closest) layer of the dishevelled brick wall, sand and water - the second layer the residential/naturalistic area, and the the third layer the skyscraper buildings. To me, the buildings in the background look almost like they are from a separate image and have been layered with the other elements like a scrapbook.

Pretend you are inside this photograph. What does it feel like?
Inside the image - it feels warm and humid. I imagine that I am walking along the path near the green park area. The area is fairly quiet; there is no-one around, I can just hear the tide coming in and out of the beach area, and there are gulls calling.

What have you learned from exploring this work of art?

From my understanding the photographer wanted to capture the degradation and the demolition of their hometown over the years. Despite not having been to visit this part of the world, I can understand the perspective and the reasoning for taking the images. In this image and the collection of images, we can understand more about the people that live there based on seeing the way that they live and where they live.

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The project Sea Breeze focuses on the urbanization of Xiamen. It documents the intermediate state of Xiamen's transformation.

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I took several photographs from this angle, however this one stood out to me as the reflection of my dads is clearly visible. I noticed the silhouette of the trees and the colours of the evening sky. I also had a play with the saturation settings on Adobe Lightroom, which made my dad's reflection and the warm colours on the curtain more prominent.

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Week 1 Research Task - Reflecting on Observational Photo Projects - Objects

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Week 1 Research Task - Reflecting on Observational Photo Projects - Objects

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What words would you use to describe this photograph?

Emptiness, energy, unfinished, uncared for, dysfunction, unhappy, trapped.

What does this photograph remind you of?

It reminds me of a nightmarish memory of doing chores in a family home. A chore that has been left unfinished either by yourself or a family member. A dysfunctional, mismatched version of happy, family life.

What can you discover about this image and the work of this artist through research? How does this new knowledge affect your understanding of the work?

The artist was using the recreation of her childhood apartment through miniatures as a therapeutic release of her childhood trauma. I believe she grew up in a dysfunctional family home. I understand the work through this lens as the image(s) are set up initially as familiar family surroundings however upon closer look you can see that something is slightly 'off.' Despite this though, there are some things that we may never understand, such as why the artist decided to put hair on the ironing board - perhaps this is referencing to a certain memory of the artist that we do not know, but I think this mystery is powerful and forces you to draw your own conclusions.

Pretend you are inside this photograph. What does it feel like?

It feels uneasy, like something is 'off.' It is quiet, and you feel almost like you are visiting a crime scene. There is no warmth within the picture or any sense that you are in a family home. You are wondering which door you should enter into, the one in the light, or the one in the shade. You are trying to piece together what may have happened to bring this scene together.

What do you think is effective about this photograph? What doesn’t work so well?

I think that what is effective about the image is the feeling that it gives you. You are left feeling as though the artist has captured this uneasy, unsettling feeling simply by taking a regular situation and making it slightly 'off' or askew. Also, upon realising that all of the images are created using miniatures, makes the image even more interesting and brings even more appreciation for the artist's level of detail and effort.

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By reconstructing her childhood home, Faustino's miniature world reshapes personal trauma into a visual narrative, inviting viewers to look closer and confront what lies beneath the surface.

At first glance, her work feels delicate-dollhouse-like interiors bathed in soft light, miniatures arranged with precision. But on closer look, things become unsettling. A tooth rests on the edge of a bathtub. A foot balances on an egg carton. A naked body sprouts extra limbs. These small-scale scenes blur the line between childhood wonder and something more fractured, more fragile.

A Home With No Roof explores what happens when childhood is unstable, when home is stripped of its sheltering qualities. Through carefully composed images, Sara De Brito Faustino creates a world where domestic life feels exposed-and the roof never fully closes. Her work wrestles with childhood and adulthood, protection and vulnerability.

Miniatures, an art her grandmother was dedicated to, became both a refuge and a tool to process trauma. By recreating her childhood apartment at a small scale, Faustino gained control over its memories. Yet, the delicate nature of these objects-carefully placed in the scene with tweezers-highlighted their fragility, reinforcing how easily things could break, an underlying tension that defines her work.

"I felt it would be easier on a smaller scale, because I would have control and I would have power over the stories and over the scenes," Faustino explains. "So I started rebuilding my apartment on a small scale and it actually gave me a sense of control and of comfort. But also there is a certain fragility and vulnerability," she says.

Faustino works with air-dry ceramics, paint, everyday scraps-like lids, packaging, discarded household items-transforming them into miniature bowls, pans, and plates. Objects take on new meaning.

And each image tells a story. In one, she appears pregnant, her belly sculpted from clay and plaster. But the focus here isn't motherhood, she explains-it's womanhood, and the tension between creation and confinement. She plays with contrast: hard against soft, solid against unstable. A foot presses onto an egg carton that somehow doesn't collapse-fragility transformed into unexpected strength. In another, a seat appears to be made of butter, subverting expectations.

Stray hairs, body parts, and insects disrupt the stillness or her images, hinting at something unspoken. This quiet distortion mirrors her own experience-how a home can appear intact while something beneath the surface is unraveling.

"This idea that everyday life from afar seems really polished in a way, but when you live in a dysfunctional home, if you look closely, it becomes scary and disgusting," Faustino says. "The idea of miniature is also to look close."

One image stands out: an arm, newly constructed. In photographing this altered body, Faustino captures a sense of stability-as if, with an extra limb, she is now more anchored. Her work is indeed a process of rebuilding, both literally and metaphorically. She constructs this new protective shell-not just in objects, but in herself. What once symbolized fragility becomes a testament to resilience.

This idea of protection runs throughout her work. Childhood trauma often leaves one unprepared for adulthood, lacking the layers needed to withstand the world. Adding a third arm in her self-portraits becomes a metaphor for reclaiming strength-her body reconstructing itself, forging a new version of her. The outcome is ambiguous, but the gesture is clear: remaking oneself is both an act of healing and a recognition of past wounds.

At first, working in miniature was frustrating, Faustino recalls. Every object had to be placed with tweezers, every imperfection amplified. But over time, she realized these imperfections made the work more vulnerable-and paradoxically, stronger. And though she frames her project as an exploration of domestic dysfunction, its deeper undercurrent is domestic abuse. She deliberately leaves it unnamed, allowing viewers to project their own experiences onto the work.

This process-of deconstruction, reconstruction, and revelation-mirrors her own journey. True closure came when the images left her home, exhibited in a space where they could exist beyond her. The exhibition venue is a former apartment, which deepens this effect. The remnants of domestic life-a bathtub, a sink-blur the line between the artifacts and reality. Visitors often linger, unsure of what they're seeing. At first, they might mistake the images for paintings or photomontages. But as they look closer, unsettling details emerge. At the end, they enter a full-scale room, revealing how the images were constructed. This final moment reshapes their understanding, sending them back to the photographs with fresh eyes.
All photos © Sara De Brito Faustino, from the series A Home With No Roof. Sara De Brito Faustino lives and works in Lausanne, Switzerland. At the core of her practice, she explores the materiality of objects and the body, highlighting textures, colors, folds, wrinkles, fissures, strengths and weaknesses. Her artistic approach, infused with emotions, is focused on the intimate; self-portraiture and intimate space; home. Beyond technique, she uses photography to transcend emotions and a tumultuous personal history. Find her work on Lucia De Stefani is a writer and editor focusing on photography, illustration, and everything teens. She lives between New York and Italy. Find her on and . .

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Fragments of Home: Sara De Brito Faustino Turns Personal Trauma into Art - PhMuseum

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By reconstructing her childhood home, Faustino's miniature world reshapes personal trauma into a visual narrative, inviting viewers to look closer and confront what lies beneath the surface.

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Week 2 Research Task - Reflecting on Constructed Photo Projects - Portraits

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Week 2 Research Task - Reflecting on Constructed Photo Projects - Portraits

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What do you see in this photography project?
I see portraits of people within their daily life and another example of human experience. I believe that in some of the images they have been asked to hold or be near something that represents who they are, such as carrying their surfboard, wearing a mask or sitting on their motorcycle.

This gives us an insight into the subjects personalities, set against a scenic Bermudian backdrop. There are interesting uses of light within the project, usually shadows and uses of natural sunlight which give the project a bright, summery, dreamy, sunset nature. I especially like the images of the Bermudian residents which seem to be in their homes, or on their way to school or work. This is interesting to me to see these people live their day to day lives against this almost dreamlike setting.

The images also contain lots of bright colours and smiling faces - this creates a throughline for the images and makes me feel as though the people within the photos are open and carefree. You also get a strong sense of community and pride from these photos. I am inspired by this and wonder what the photographer's relationship with the subjects was like and what she asked them to think about or pose within the images.

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A small selection of my series of portraits of Bermudians. The small sub-tropic island is home to less than 70,000 residents. The British dependent territory is a mixture of British, West Indian and American cultures.

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Week 2 Research Task - Reflecting on Constructed Photo Projects 

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Week 2 Research Task - Reflecting on Constructed Photo Projects 

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What is the genre of this photograph? (still life, portrait, landscape, documentary, architecture, abstract, conceptual etc.)

These images are conceptual and feature the iconic Playboy Bunny Holly Maddison. My first impressions were that this set of images are perhaps for a movie, an advertisement, or clothing line.

When looking further, noticing all the ladies in the images are dressed in the same outfits, I noticed something else. These images trigger a certain part of my brain and nostalgia I thought were forgotten. The bubble-gum pink sweaters, thigh high socks, mini skirts and heels remind me of movies like Mean Girls, Clueless and Legally Blonde. I thought that people started school when they were older in America because the actors that played High School students looked so much older than the parts they were playing. To me, these images reflect the 2000's version of inspiration for young women. Back then, there was only one way to be considered attractive, and subjects all sport this uniform.

The images are dreamy - not only due to the use of soft lighting, but the repetitiveness of the dress code amongst the subjects, and of all models - Holly Maddison to be the centre is almost too perfect - dreamlike.

I believe the artist is attempting to communicate a certain genre of femininity and womanhood that was presented to her as an aspiration in the bright, sugary, glitter coated aesthetic of the 2000's. As a young girl watching reality shows such as The Girls Next Door, this look was incredibly admirable. Although what comes with age is realising you can't - and perhaps don't wish to - follow this aesthetic, it comes with a nostalgic fondness that can remain the basis of our aesthetic preference.

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OMG, I’m Being Killed #2 - Petra Collins

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OMG, I’m Being Killed #2 preview of the new book by Petra Collins

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Week 2 Research Task - Reflecting on Constructed Photo Projects - Still Life

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Week 2 Research Task - Reflecting on Constructed Photo Projects - Still Life

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How has the photographer captured the play of light in this image?

The photographer has captured a bouquet of dead sunflowers in a project centring around her time in her home country of Columbia which she has since left in her early teens. The images captured moments from her home country as she attempts to find familiarity in this place and how it has changed since she has long since left it behind

I feel like the photographer has used the reflection of the natural, sunset light to highlight the yellow of the sunflowers - they appear bright despite their dying. We can see the shades of green of the stems and leaves towards the left side of the image, then move on to some more shadowy shapes behind the capitulum of the flower. The different elements of the close-up image make it appear a busy, colourful mess of still life.

I like how the photographer has chosen to take an image of a partly dying bouquet of flowers, as most representations of still life are of a lively bouquet. This presents us with a more interesting, dusky colour pallette.

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Olvido Pa’ Recordar (Forget To Remember) - PhMuseum

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Olvido pa’ Recordar is a journey of reconciling with loss as an act of mourning after seeking asylum in the U.S. and leaving Colombia fourteen years ago. Revisiting a place I once knew, I confront what has been lost: family, home, and self.

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Week 3 Research Task - Reflecting on critically engaged photographs (draft)

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Week 3 Research Task - Reflecting on critically engaged photographs (draft)

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"Dreams of an Orange Sky explores the search for sanctuary [...] Through intimate portrayals of confined spaces, the images reveal the quiet angst of urban life..."

The set of photographs follows this theme of feeling trapped and restricted, however this image in particular I feel is critically engaged. The sign of the dolls house is used as a signifier of owning a house amidst the cost of living crisis. It could also be seen as a signifier of a childhood dream or a child-like fantasy. The colours used here - orange, lilac, white and pink - are simplistic and bold. This gives connotations of again a childlike theme and are used as a device to remind us of simpler times.

The subject stares down at the house longingly, their gaze a sign of longing, wistfulness and desire. They are 'too big' for the small house - the subject connotes the message that people are existing in cramped living conditions during this crisis. Their desire is to own their own house, the eye contact between the subject and the small dolls house exemplifies the message.

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Dreams of an Orange Sky explores the search for sanctuary amid rising housing costs in Mumbai. Through intimate portrayals of confined spaces, the images reveal the quiet angst of urban life, inviting reflection on struggles and sparking conversations

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Click the link to see semiotic analysis of Mugler Perfume Angel ad.

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Weeks 4 & 5 - Creating self portrait with at-home lighting

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Weeks 4 & 5 - Creating self portrait with at-home lighting

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I found the way that this natural sunlight came through the curtains in my bedroom really interesting, and suitable for my at-home lighting setup.

The setting of the image being taken in my bedroom that I used as a child, that I have been staying in the last few months, highlights the change in my recent reality, an experience I never thought I would be faced with.

The sunlight hitting the bedlinen provides a dreamy softness, the colour palette of whites, pinks and purples blend together nicely and are representative of my inner child.

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Self portrait with at-home lighting setup

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Elements I wanted to include:

Half or partial section of face within the light casting through the window

Wearing clothing from my teens .

Stuffed animals with sentimental value.

Floral wallpaper.

Laptop - open but not in use.

Neutral facial expression.

Legs crossed or bent - representing vulnerability.

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Self portrait with at-home lighting setup

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Self portrait with at-home lighting setup

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Uta Barth uses shadows and light to form her images.

The interesting projections captured are calm and homely.

She will also capture shadows made by objects such as glasses of water or vases of flowers.

Some of her images are taken of the same section of wall or space, just at different times of day. It is interesting to see how much the light can change and the positions of the shadows can shift.

The illuminated sections draw our attention to that part of the setting, causing the viewer to notice or draw importance towards this section.

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Paul Graham - Paris 11-15th November, 2015

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This collection of photographs focuses more on the way the light looks when it is passing through the window, rather than the shadows it creates.

Way the light looks when hitting furnishings in this set of images is beautiful. The images were taken during the 2015 attacks in Paris. The artist took the images as a way to find and showcase solace, calm, and comforting feelings.

Great images can be taken within at home lighting setups or using natural daylight. Sometimes simplistic images, such as the way the sunlight casts through a blind, can be calming and relaxing to look at and enjoy.

The sunset/sunrise colour pallette of the set of images have informed the type of image I wish to take - I think the collection of images maintain their linear nature as they all fall within the same selection of warm colours.

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During the terrorist attacks on Paris in November 2015, photographer Paul Graham took refuge in an apartment in the city with his partner and young child. In response to the suffocating tension on the city’s streets, he made this series. Looking at the images you would never know of the traumatic events unfolding outsi

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My photographs from the last few weeks in my chosen layout.

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Isabelle Morris Photography Powerpoint- Change

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Isabelle Morris Photography Powerpoint- Change

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Please see the link to my PowerPoint displaying my images.

I decided to choose the theme of 'Change' as this is something I have been dealing with, battling against, acknowledging and learning to live with over the last few months.

My life has changed drastically over the last year. I have had to prioritise my mental health, I left my career to start uni, then left London and returned home to Devon.

Everything has changed but so many things feel exactly the same. The images I've taken encapsulate my new reality and all the changes I'm facing. My new life is incredibly different than before however I am trying my absolute hardest to accept the change, and reframe to see it positively.

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Week 1 - Observational Photographs - Outtake

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Week 1 - Observational Photographs - Outtake

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I looked back at some images that I took at my local boat club when trying to capture some observational imagery.

This picture doesn't work for me for a few reasons:

Framing incorrect - the focus of the boats isn't in the middle, we don't have a clear view of them to make the image seem purposeful.

No clear leading lines - the image is taken at a low, uneven angle which throws off the direction of the image.

The angle also means that we don't see a clear view of the shadow. Shadows can be used effectively to add interest to an image, but here there are no clear shapes and again their inclusion does not look purposeful.

This angle also does not capture too much in regards to the themes - experience, reality, change - perhaps if I took an image of two juxtaposing boats, or included more sky and scenery to set the boats within their location, this would improve the image to fit the brief.