Sony Awards - In a Changing World
The idea for my project is to focus on my family home in the countryside. Living in the city where it is always busy and there are billboards everywhere, you have a constant awareness of the latest news and the constant changes going on in the world which is such a stark contrast to my family home which is in the middle of nowhere essentially and very isolated, it is very quiet and nothing exciting ever happens and you aren't really aware of the the change going on in the world unless you look at the news.
Going to the countryside for me personally is like an escape from the world, I can completely switch off from whatever is happening and disconnect and I think this would be an interesting way to respond to the Sony brief. Rather than showing an example of the changing world, show an escape from it and how some people are very unaware of the ever changing nature of life.
I want to show the slow paced, almost shut off life of a family in the countryside and show how whatever is happening and changing in the world, things remain the same in small countryside communities.
I did a project in first year of university which was based on the daily walk that I did with my family every day during the first coronavirus lockdown and I think that this style of shooting will work really well for this project but with elements of family life included and potentially portraits.
These are some photographs from that project.
David Gibbeson
I found this series of photographs by David Gibbeson which are very similar to some of the shots I will be taking for my project. What I really like about his work is the colours. I love the contrast of the deep greens with the more muted purples and oranges in some of his shots.
Emma Hardy
Emma Hardy has been photographing her family life for years in the countryside. She catches the subtle, in between moments that might not normally be captured.
These photographs are a big inspiration for my project as these are the types of photographs I want to capture.
These are some photographs from her family series that initially got me interested in her work.
This series is a mix of different types of photography from landscapes to portraits to still life and they all work really well as a sequence/series.
With the series that I did in first year, the photographs all worked really well as a series of mainly landscape shots. If I can combine that idea again with portraits and still life shots like Hardy I think I will be able to make a really successful photographic series.
Claire Richardson - Harlemville
Harlemville is a small community in North America that adheres to the philosophical writings of the Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner and his Waldorf schooling system. The community encourages freedom of expression, creativity and imagination, which in turn is meant to imbue an uninhibited self-confidence and self-awareness rarely present in mainstream American society. Clare Richardson spent 24 months observing the community firsthand and found their reverence for nature and the "confident quietness" of this small place in the world to be captivating. With their quiet, formal clarity, her images evoke a nostalgic sense of innocence; Harlemville appears idyllic in its radical optimism.
Richardson first visited Harlemville on May 2000 and kept coming back over the summers of the next three years. The work turns around a group of kids and their relationship with the wild nature that surrounds the community they live in.
This series is about the delicate time of adolescence and the coming of age of a group of young men who have been given freedom of experience and a chance to interact with nature in a way any of us hardly experience anymore.
In Richardsons images we see a joyful and playful youth that develops upon a sense of community and respect between each other and the surrounding environment. Every image seems to be taken out of a rolling camera left there to record the kids experience without any sort of direction or interaction.
London in Lockdown - Hoxton Mini Press, Jilke Golbach
I found this book in the university library. As my project is based around the theme of the countryside being isolated from the more urban areas of the country and world I think isolation photography will be very similar as a lot of photographers only had their family and house to use as photographic subjects and any landscape shots are lacking people. My home in the countryside feels as thought it is in a permanent lockdown as not many people live there and nothing groundbreaking ever happens so I think looking into projects shot over lockdown will be a good way to find inspiration for my own piece of work.
There are a few series that I was really drawn to that I will put in here to look back at for inspiration.
Lydia Goldblatt - Fugue
"These photographs are part of a series of images and text made during 2020-2021. Titled Fugue, the work draws on mothering as a central theme, and is driven by my need to explore and respond to the fundamental themes of intimacy and distance that have been brought to the fore through lockdown and Covid 19. In making work about this time, I draw on a radius of about 50 metres, 4 people, and a handful of streets. I am privileged to be able to do so. My home and my camera have offered places of refuge and safety. The uncertainty and anxiety of Covid, the staggering loss it has brought, are set against the personal grief of losing my mother, coming to terms with being a mother myself, and the struggle to understand what that means" - Goldblatt
The photographs from this series fit exactly in to the kind of photography I want to produce for this project. Whilst my series isn't based on the pandemic or lockdown life, the theme is focusing on the isolation of living in a rural area so they images that I will be producing will be very similar to these as I am focusing on family and daily rituals of life in the countryside where there isn't much to do for entertainment and a lack of sense of the real world.
Shoot Plan
Date: 1st - 7th November
Location:
• Knights, Liphook Road, Passfield, GU30 7RX
• Passfield
• The Oast Houses - Passfield
• Liphook train station (?)
Kit:
• Camera - Sony a7C
• Lens - Samyang AF 35mm/2.8 FE
• Tripod
Rough shot list
As this will be a documentary series I will mostly be shooting things as they happen so I cant make a list of all the shots I want to take but I can plan still life shots and portraits I want to take.
• Collecting vegetables and eggs
• Shot of produce in basket
• Portrait of Mum and L
• Portrait of Willa in the field - Long dress and wellies
• Horses going past in the morning
• Milk man
• Village Shop
• Dogs
• Walking dogs
• Chickens
• L on swings
• Mum watering tomatoes
• Fresh picked tomatoes in hand
• Greenhouse
• Trampoline
• Baking
• Willa collecting eggs
Zalmy Berkowitz
Berkowitz does documentary style wedding and family photography as a career but also documents his own family in his spare time.
Summer Murdock
Murdock is a Utah based photographer who specialises in kids, lifestyle and portraiture.
I went back to my family home for seven days, keeping my camera with me at all times so I wouldn't miss out on any shots, I took hundreds of photographs but narrowed it down to 50 which I edited.
I wanted my photographs to have a film look. To achieve this look I used a preset I made myself in photoshop. The preset has increased brightness, a green tint and grain. As the lighting isn't consistent for all the shots, I made adjustments where necessary after applying the preset.
I knew that I wanted to submit 10 photographs to the Sony competition and I found it really hard to chose just 10 because there are so many that I love but I had to chose the ones that worked best in portraying the message I was aiming to send that really showed every aspect of my families life in the countryside.
My statement for the series:
My series of images shows the quiet, simple countryside lifestyle which can feel isolated from the rest of the world as the everchanging nature of life doesn’t really affect these small communities and most often you have to watch the news to know what is going on in the world.
Going to my family home in the countryside is my escapism from the reality and fast paced nature of life as living in the city you are constantly aware of everything going on it’s nice to have a place to shut off from it all.
This series will show the slow paced, almost shut off life of a family in the countryside and how whatever is changing in the world, life remains the same in small countryside communities.
