Super colourful and shitty camera quality, we ask ourselves what is going on

My ethos surrounding photography as of late has been imbuing my work with as much mystery and nonsense as possible. I didn't want the message to be told, I don't want the message to be obvious but rather something that is secondary and is only translated through a vessel other than the image itself.

was "Maximum effort minimum result". Alys got around 500 art students

from Lima, Peru to displace a dune by a few inches by shovelling sand. This work is a metaphor for latin Americas disproportional effort needed to change a little.

Great colours, gruesome image, right up my alley.

The image should also feel like you shouldn't be seeing it, like it was found on an old camera. This makes it all the more uncomfortable when viewing.

I recognise that this project sounds like it has two different concepts but to me they add to each other. A representation of the acceptance of defeat and then mystery and a lack of understanding. The mystery is driven by emotion of disgust and this is the same thing that is at the very basis of defeat and acceptance.

Darkness and saturated colour is such a wonderful combination.

• One ArriLite 800W bounced off the ceiling and onto model

• One profoto flash head with snoot hitting from stage right

• one on camera flash

  
  

  
  

I painted two panels in green, this in contrast with the harsh light made it look like an old video from a cam corder which added to the feeling of seeing an image which you shouldn't be seeing. Green is also quite a disturbing colour and easily makes one fee uneasey.

To make the image even more muddy I put a fabric over the lens to distort the image even more.

I wanted it to feel like a liminal space, neither here nor there.

Movement is very important for my project because the idea of a moving image needs to come across in the stills.

(Lost Highway 1997 David Lynch)

Because film is so expensive to buy and develop I had to be very careful with what I shot. Each roll costs around £150 and it only produces two and a half minutes of footage but that being said, every second produces 24 images so when you look at it like that it comes out to 3240 images. I didn't shoot one frame at a time but this gave me a lot of variety and options to choose from. Shooting so careful kind of goes against my normal mode of shooting, I quite like shooting instinctively if I know that what I am shooting is working but for this trip I couldn't do that. because of tis i wrote a shot plan before i left to Spain.

I had two rolls of Kodak Vision 3 200T. Giving me 5 minutes total of film that I could shoot. The first roll that I shot I did here In London to test the Camera and see the effect my camera would have on the subjects that I used. The second was to be used in Spain.

(Untitled Film Still 4)

(Untitled 92)

I made the background black and boxed in the model to achieve the darkest image possible, because I don't know the film developers I couldn't ask tem to develop it darker so I had to darken it slightly in photoshopp.

My father used to tell me as a kid that he wasn't an alcoholic and weather he actually believed this or not I don't know but it certainly meant that either he was lying to himself or to me. He hid himself behind a mask of normality and this mask, much like this silicone one, didn't fool anyone.

So for the final images it is vital that emotion comes through, having an actor who is able to communicate this well and who knows it well because of their own experience was therefore perfect and that was apparent from the first shot.

Goyas and Repins are too literal for my taste but they are beautiful, and even though the message is in your face it is the simultaneous subtlety in the expression and compositions of these two paintings that are really striking.

Stills that lean more into the moving image aspect of it are my favourite ones, they propel the idea of stills from a film.

My father did great and told me he looked inside his past to tap into the character, which of course was just himself.

Super simple, the less light the better since I want the images to be dark.

I shot them on the 16mm film as well to keep the consistency and only held the shutter release for 1 second as to not waste film.

This is not something I will pursue but it is a nice way to experiment and develop film. The problem is with how randomised it it, you can never be sure you will get what you want from the film.

Image number 3 shows myself floating which I did by editing out the two white blocks that I was resting on.

Again I used my favourite lighting setup of a bounced light but in this case it was quite a hard bounce which can be seen in the heavy shadows.