Some journal entries.

I plan to keep on writing these, I want to print them out on to acetate and print them in the dark room, I have thought about printing them on plastic or glass the only problem being that I don't really have the money to make them. I would really like to slightly destroy the prints like I did with the other (smug fingerprints on them) to make them look worn.  

Update

After my 2nd doctor's appointment I have been prescribed Fluoxetine for my depression and anxiety, I am in two minds about how I feel about this.

1.Finally I have done something about this and I am on my way to clearing my head,

2.Did I come off that bad that I really need these?

I will document before and after taking this as I have a busy Halloween weekend (my friends from home are down visiting me) and I will start taking the medication on the monday as it is 'advised' that I do not drink with them. 

I have started to record a video diary and started to keep a journal as well and will be scanning in entries every week. 

1st test shoot.

For my first test shoot I decided to shoot on my dslr camera to work out how I wanted to shoot, I used natural lighting for this as I didn't want to images to brightly lit and although I wasn't using my first original idea of cameraless photography I still wanted the images to look dull and grainy. I sat just beside my bedroom window and started to take profile shots. I noticed that the left of my room was quite shaded and decided to try and adjust myself so I was bang in the middle of the light and the shadow.

I turned up the iso and seeing as this was just a practise shot I was happy enough to use this a base for editing. These are just a few of the edits I came up with. 

I used the burn tool to draw over the image, I wanted it to look busy and dark. I was happy with the result and layered the image with the cling film layer that I used for my flower images to see what that would do wo the image. I prefer the b/w images as they are darker, the colour images look slightly orange when darkened. I used a film grain filter and added a darker boarder around the image. I printed it onto acetate, one with the cling film layer, one without and one I printed over a flower image I had edited the day before, it looked busy and chaotic which was what I was trying to capture all this time.

These are the end results. (I forgot to invert the image so they came out like this. I will invert them)

Out of all them the last is by far my favorite. Once I had printed the images out on to acetate I dabbed my finger on one of the prints to make sure it was dry and I liked the effect it made so I started to dab all over the image.  This is it inverted.

I will need to print it again as it is quite grey but overall I am happy with the outcome of today's test shoot. 

my notes from the darkroom:

Artist research-Philip Toledano

Maybe

'When my mother died suddenly in 2006, everything changed. I thought that parents were forever, but when mine vanished, I realized that nothing really was. 
Obvious to most perhaps, but not me. The future became a shadowed landscape, filled with uncertain paths 
and ruinous storms. I wondered-what other sudden, dark turns lay ahead? Rather than wait helplessly for my future, I decided to confront my fears. I would try and anticipate my fate. Guess at the abrupt and unforeseen directions my life might take. I would see myself as an old man. I would envision failure and loneliness. I would be invisible. Unable to walk. Obese. I would suffer a stroke. I would lose myself. I would slip sideways, into the irrelevant. I would see my own death.

Photography is always about the past. The moment picture is taken; it's behind us, in history.

This project is about the future-but how do you research what has not yet occurred? I took a DNA test that told me what illnesses I was likely to get. I consulted with fortune-tellers, tarot card readers, hypnotists, numerologist’s 
and palm readers. I researched insurance company statistics. I looked within, at my greatest fears. I worked with a skilled prosthetics expert, so I could physically become my future selves. I took acting lessons. I learned how to lose myself in character.' 

It was in a tutorial I found out about his work, it was when Natasha was telling us about the Paris trip that she mentioned him. His work sounded interesting as it was all about what if and the future rather than the past. 

I liked his work as it was dramatic and looked like film stills, the images didn't look too staged and where rather natural.  For Toledano, throwing himself into work has always been a way to process what was happening in his life. He worked on a series about caring for his father, and recently completed a body of work that dealt with the loss of his sister when he was 6 years old.

Although I do not plan to take images like his I do admire his composition and the great lengths he went to to create these images. I plan to talk to a professional throughout the entire process of my project and create images after the appointment. So in that respect his work is something to look up to. 

Artist research-Edward Honaker

Edward Honaker

Twenty one-year-old photographer Edward Honaker documents his own depression in powerful self-portraits. The series of black and white images illustrates the photographer's experience with depression and anxiety.

In an attempt to raise awareness of the topic, Honaker says about the project: "Mental health disorders are such a taboo topic. If you ever bring it up in conversation, people awkwardly get silent, or try to tell you why it’s not a real problem. When I was in the worst parts of depression, the most helpful thing anyone could have done was to just listen to me - not judging, not trying to find a solution, just listen. I’m hoping that these images will help open up conversation about mental health issues. Everyone is or will be affected by them one way or another, and ignoring them doesn’t make things better."

Honaker hopes his project will inspire others to not only have a conversation about mental illness, but push them to be more accepting of those who struggle with it. 

"When I was making the portfolio, I asked myself if I was the kind of person whom others would feel comfortable coming to if they were going through a difficult time and needed someone to talk to," he explained. "Truthfully, at the time, I don't think I was. I've still got quite a ways to go, but the whole experience made me a lot more patient and empathetic towards others."

The artist's openness is particularly important when it comes to mental health stigma and men, given that men are more likely not to speak up if they're having thoughts of suicide.

Artist research-Christian Hopkins

Christian Hopkins

Christian Hopkins, whose images experiment with combining self-portraiture and conceptual techniques, achieving dramatic and emotive results. Christian’s path into the photographic world was instigated when he received a camera as a gift and despite his reservations, forced himself to start photographing. Photography made him see the world in a more beautiful light and soon became a tool for Christian in battling his demons, providing a form of therapy in coping with his depression and allowing him a channel to communicate his emotions. 

'Whenever I felt controlled by a particular emotion, I wouldn't be able to think or concentrate properly until I took that emotion out of my head and trapped it in a photograph.' After a bout of depression and subsequent suicide attempts, Christian discovered Flickr his senior year of high school. At first, he began copying the style or other photographers he found through the picture-sharing website, before eventually finding his own surreal style.

‘Photography became a form of therapy that I could use to fight my depression,’

‘I would create an emotion that I was feeling so that I could see it. Once it was on the page, it was no longer in my head and that was incredibly relieving.’

Christian's favorite image that he has taken is one titled ‘Inner Demons’, because it ‘so accurately’ depicts what he is feeling, and he believes that anyone looking at the photograph can immediately understand the conflicted emotions that he is trying to convey, without ever having felt that way themselves.

‘It connects me to everyone who looks at that picture,’ 

Christian Hopkin's work is breath taking, the images are stunning, haunting and heat breaking, some images are true to real life and other have been inspired by films such as The Lovely Bones. His work is extremely personal and creative, the images are clean and the reason behind them is what I inspire to. 

For someone that used his work as a way of portraying how he felt he gained a huge following rather quickly, I can see why. The reason why I have included his work is because how blunt the images are, they do not spin a romantic undertone, they show the ugly truth behind depression. This is what I wish to show in my work.  

Artist research-Kate Joy Crawford

Kate Joy Crawford

"My Anxious Heart explores and identifies how emotionally and physically depleting general anxiety disorder can be from a personal perspective. As I have carried anxiety for the majority of my life, I’ve chosen to photographically depict this battle and its constant presence. Since it is within my own mind where anxiety is born, I have decided to interpret my roles as both instigator and victim through self portraiture.

Through this body of work, I am visually interpreting my own emotional and physical journey so that others may be able to understand this weight that so many bear in our society. The physical ramifications of the disorder, such as a racing heart, dizziness, shortness of breath and lightheadedness, frequently go unnoticed or are misinterpreted by those who have never suffered from anxiety. Although the physical symptoms make up a great deal of the disorder, the emotional outcome is exceedingly difficult to encapsulate as well. Anxiety bars the sufferer from the risk of discovery, the desire to explore new ideas, and the possibility of exiting a comfort zone. It makes sure that it will never be alone. It finds you when you’re in the midst of joy, or alone in your own mind. It is quiet and steady, reminding you of your past failures, and fabricating your future outcomes.

My interpretation of these symptoms through my images aids in the explanation of how true anxiety has the capability to drain every last drop of aspiration. This representation is achieved in the photograph with the use of black objects and materials that subtly interact within the frame. Manipulating the images in this way evokes a sense of overprotection and lingering presence. By providing these surreal images as expressions of anxiety within a realistic portrait, the viewer is guided through the internal and external struggle of a person living with this disorder. Using my own stories and experiences, I am capturing the raw essence of anxiety. Through this personal journey, I have grown and found that depicting my fears has become therapeutic, as well as a gateway for others to express their oppression and begin their own healing process."

While looking into photographers that deal with depression I stubbled upon Kate Joy Crawford, her photography is beautifully haunting as it hits home, the way that she describes it as therapeutic was one of the reasons I looked into her. Her work deals with the fact that she wouldn't want to sleep and how carrying things (water jugs) is not a hard thing to do but after a long amount of time you start to forget how easy it used to be and focus on how impossible it has become to imagine your life without them, the burden has become a norm, a heavy one. 

 

Although her work has nothing to do with alternative processing, it has inspired me to book the studio out to do some work including myself and possibly others just to dig deeper into the theme. If the shoot goes well I recently have bought some acetate sheets to print on. I also want to collect peoples stories to work with and see how they make me feel, I might do some work on them eg. after I have read them create an image of how I feel about them whether that be writing a journal entry or actually creating an image.