Final Major Project - First Ideas and Week Review

After reviewing my work from not only the past year, but also my A-level work to expand and inspire my new course of exploration, I produced a mindmap of my first ideas for this project. One of my starting points for this was to write down all of the 'projects' I have had in my head for a while that I have wanted to do but haven't found a place for them to fall into my artwork as of yet. This then sparked several avenues of exploration, and generated several ideas which I could expand on for a starting point.

Masks

I was recently inspire by two gorgeous masquerade style masks. They were bought from a high street jewellery shop, and have a definite commercial/mass produced look about them, but nevertheless it got me thinking about the act of masking and its origins.

My creativity was initially sparked on a very basic surface level, with the idea that I could photograph the masks on people's faces, just a basic portraiture shoot to produce some beautiful photos. In order to do this, I will need to do some research into modern portraiture photography as it is not something I have researched int before. I think I want the quality of the photos to be high, meaning I will need to borrow a decent camera from the art/photography department. I will need to consider the lighting, and background colour of all my shots, perhaps doing some research into colour theory and links to emotion/aesthetics in photography to ensure I have the right colour. However, having said I would like the highest possible quality for my photos, I have recently required a minolta film camera (basic 35mm) and several different colour and shape lenses. I think it would be interesting to explore this camera in this shoot as some of the lenses such as a vintage kaleidoscope lens, and see the effects these can have on the end photograph. I would also like to explore photographing the masks on models in not only a simple portraiture setting, but I also have several different ideas written down that i would like to explore such as taking photos looking out from the mask (showing what people who hide away from society see).

After photographing the masks, I think it will be important to research the wider context and history of masks. Not only is 'mask' a noun but also a verb, as in 'to mask' something. Whether this be physically using a mask, or something in a bigger context such as censorship.

In order to get the most out of this project, I will need to set out questions (as I did for my last project) so that I always have something to reference as I progress, or alternatively if I become stuck, and use them as goals for the project.

• what does a mask do?

• how does the physical location of a mask (on a body?) change the meaning?

• what does the mask 'see'?

• what's behind the mask?

• what else can be masked except from people?

Connected to the idea of masking, one of the other 'works' I had attached to my mind map that I have wanted to complete was the use of full page newspaper photos placed over peoples faces. I have briefly explored this idea before in the media rotation of stage one, and it proved to be very effective and I ended up really liking the end product (a short clip of polaroid photos placed together in a GIF format). Again, the kind of questions I have for this idea are:

• do I use strangers or people I know to hold up the photos, and does it make a difference if their identity is going to be masked anyway?

• would the same newspaper face repeated in different locations be more effective than using different faces?

Through writing this blog post now, I have come to realise a connection between all of the mini project Ideas I have had. They actually do genuinely all come under the project 'title' of masking. This is further evident in another mini project idea I had shown on the mind map, where I want to photograph people holding up a film camera to their face. I am not sure what the context is behind this idea, I think currently it is more of an aesthetic choice to take the photos, as I am not sure what i would do with them after. Whether it is a case of displaying the photos physically or having them as part of a larger body/piece of work, I am not currently sure, however this can be decided once I have taken the actual photos.

I think I have come to the realisation that instead of choosing one idea for my project and disregarding the others, it would be more beneficial to my artistic journey to choose a good place to start and then build on that incorporating the other ideas as is appropriate. This makes for a larger body of work, and a broader exploration of the topic. For example, another separate idea I had was to build on my work with music and composition in art, however I could eventually add this into my artwork adding a further dimension to a previously basic piece.