Media Project - Statement of Intent

Emulation

My project 'Emulation' will aim to explore and comment on idolisation; when a person can be so subconsciously obsessed with a given celebrity icon that they are blinded to the fact that they reflect their characteristics such as physical appearance.

The thing that interests me the most about this idea, is that in the image I have been working with the eyes are closed in the photo, reflecting how the person reading the newspaper cannot see how they see how infatuated they are with the subject. However, the physical act of holding the newspaper up over their face highlights how it is a self inflicted problem that has been implemented by the person holding the photograph.

Something I need to experiment with over the course of this week in the remaining time, is experiment with different celebrities that fake under the same category of Prince (e.g Bowie, Michael Jackson, etc..) and research images of their 'death newspapers' released the day after their death. I think this will either be hugely beneficial and I will decide to broaden my use of celebrity faces to other celebrities, or I will decide that actually I only want to work with the image of Prince with his eyes closed.

Although the closed eye image is hugely striking and at the moment is 'the one to beat' for me, I think there is a danger of the images becoming boring as the use of a repeated monochromatic image is not massively visually stimulating. However on the flip side I also think tat if I chose the right locations and settings for my photos, the image will be the one thing that links and draws my images together in a series.

The choice of a newspaper is also something I think is interesting to explore, as it currently suggests to me that my photos are aimed at an older generation, seeing as many people believe newspapers are becoming outdated with the rise of new technologies. Therefore from this idea, I can take forward and experiment of using different platforms to display the image, such as tablets, printed photographs, or projections.

The choice of the polaroid photo comes from several different directions, firstly the use of polaroid itself is quite an old practice as now we have modern tehcnologies such as smart phones and high resolution cameras, polaroid and film cameras are a thing of the past. Therefore by using polaroid pictures to capture my scenes evokes a certain feeling and emotion of nostalgia, which links firmly to the subject matter of Prince and the past as he is now no longer alive, and the polaroid was very much alive during his lifetime. I think it also really boosts the aesthetic, as polaroid photography is on the rise again with the introduction of new instant cameras, and increased interest in old instant photography.

Prince - June 7, 1958 – April 21, 2016

Polaroid is celebrating 80 years in 2017 (height of popularity in 1977, https://dp.la/exhibitions/exhibits/show/evolution-personal-camera/polaroid-era)

Unseen polaroid images of Prince - http://www.dazeddigital.com/music/article/36254/1/prince-our-shooting-star-photos-nicole-nodland