Methodology Summary

The overall theme of this project is about how I initially struggled to find inspiration and felt completely drained, and so felt that it was due to the area that I live in that was causing this lack of inspiration. I started to look at the area and how much waste there is in such a small area and believed that this was the reason for my lack of inspiration to do anything. So basically my project is an environmental statement 

My visual strategy was to use digital photography and photoshop to manipulate the images in the way that I saw the area around me at that point in my life. This was so that I could emphasise the feelings of isolation and abandonment and at the same time make a statement about the environment that I saw before me. There are so many buildings in this area that are just left to rot while other areas are 'changed for the better' such as the new bus station, which has just made the old one become a haven for skaters. This is a good thing as these skaters can go somewhere when its raining but ultimately the old bus station and certain parts of the Pentagon centre are just being wasted.
The inspirations or references for this project mainly come from post apocalyptic films and games, such as 28 Days Later, I am Legend, 12 Monkeys and Fallout 3. Photographers such as James Casebere, Gregory Crewdson, Michal Karcz and Rut Blees Luxemburg. I have not shown any people within my images as this would have changed the way people viewed them and what I wanted to get across. The idea of abandonment needed to stand out the most which is why I photographed areas of desolation, the image below is a great reference to show desolation but for me this was a step too far, the project was now less about post apocalypse but more about what it has begun to look like in this area and without some regeneration in the poorer parts of the area it will get worse and more buildings will become abandoned.

Fallout 3 Screenshot.


With this project it originally started with me wanting to show my own personal feelings to a certain area, but I realised that what I actually wanted to communicate was the idea of a environmental statement. I had my iPod on shuffle and a Nero song came on called 'Choices', for me this song verbalised what I wanted to show. Our day to day decisions may not feel like they have an impact on what is around us but if more and more people start having to close their businesses or more people feel the need to litter and destroy things then this will cause lots of problems in the future.

There are three images that I have produced all of which are at size A0 and have 5mm foam board mounts, the series has the same manipulation done through photoshop and they are compositionally linked. I felt that it would be important not to have any boundaries between the images and the viewer so I did not want the images within frames. I feel as if people are less likely to look at the details of the images if they have glass in front of them and because they are such large prints you are able to stand back and get an idea of the entire series and then move in on each individual image to actually see all of the waste and destruction that has been caused by people from the area.

In order to make these prints or even to continue the series and make an exhibition I have looked into crowd funding, this is a means of getting money for rewards. So I have asked for £600 in exchange for postcards, prints, invitations to exhibitions and photography workshops. This money will allow me to continue the series e.g. get some more images printed from the series and also be able to have an exhibition which I would like to collaborate with a few other creatives. I know that exhibitions can be done on small budgets as the one I did in January with 6 other photographers was done on a small budget in a very grand theatre.

I believe that I have produced a realised body of work, the three images that I have printed work as a set and show a degree of the problem although I feel that this would be an ongoing project as there are a lot more places in the local area that have abandoned buildings and problems with waste that I have seen but not yet photographed. There would also be more of a statement about the environment if I carried on with this project as I would be picking out more and more areas that had been left.