This unit is the one I have been anticipating the most at rave since my interview, because I knew it would provide an opportunity to make something introspective, whilst also contributing to my degree. I feel the need to make this specific book for myself more than anyone else, just as a record of how far I have come over the last year on a personal level as well as a photographer and also to appreciate the moments that have made it. The concise meaning of the title will be in the book, so here I will talk in a more general sense, as a sort of rationale. I started this year coming off the back of one of the worse years in my life, but also one of the most important because of what I have learnt about myself and what it means to be here in the first place. I have struggled to have motivation and direction with anything to do with the future for a very long time, mostly writing myself off as not even having one in the first place. This time last year I was ready to give up again and resign myself to working in a menial job, finding it hard to deal with the guilt of not being able to live up to expectations from myself and others. This book will not just be a show of triumph and my change of heart towards the light, but also an acknowledgement of just how wrong and flawed my thinking has been for all these years, a show that I might have actually learnt from my mistakes this time and that im finally ready to talk about them. I say this because without the crashes I have had, I wouldn't feel so full of life in this moment, so appreciative of the things I have been given. I don't know if this really constitutes my redemption, but it is certainly a good start from my end. 

Whilst there is obviously some photographic/visual inspirations for this book, the biggest inspirations conceptually for the book come from my other love, hip-hop. I have loved rap for as long as I can remember and these are 3 albums that have stuck with me personally since I heard them all for different reasons whilst all holding to some parallels: All three of these albums are incredibly emotionally honest and introspective from the authors point of view, all three artists delve deep into their own behaviours, and how this has shaped the reality they are in now with the intention of showing the audience and themselves better. These are just admissions of being imperfect, but more a display of actual character growth and acceptance of living with the mistakes you have made and atoning for them over time, by changing behaviour and most importantly being honest and to the point. Cilvia and IDLS (Middle and right) are featured here because I have always identified with the discussion of mental health/illness on both albums as well as their admission of how both authors have sabotaged themselves and exacerbated their own demons through vices and dismissive behaviour. Both are quite dark, and depressing albums however they are meant to serve as an allegory, a reality check to show that burdens cannot be carried alone without great consequences to oneself and the people around them, we all need help. They are also both contributions made by people who like me, had not received any healthcare support for these things thus far, due to being dismissive and/or ashamed of their predicaments. This finally brings me to 4:44, which is probably the biggest influence conceptually to this book. 4;44 is nothing like Jay Z has ever done before, and is definetely his most emotionally naked album. Jay dropped the notion of who everybody knows him to be, the 'gangsta' image or the billionaire. Instead he offers us his shortcomings in marriage and as a family man, talks about his legacy and the fact he is getting older as well as think pieces about societal issues. And though my book will not be a response to cheating on Beyonce, or growing tired of my rockstar image; but we stand for the same thing. At the end of the day we are all humans, full of habits and contradictions; things we need to make up for and things that we have learned. It is rare to see somebody so successful give such precise breakdowns of their flaws without asking for forgiveness. I want to make this without asking for something back from the reader, but instead offering myself up for evaluation, raw, uncut and imperfect in the hopes that maybe they will see themselves in it, one day feeling comfortable enough to do the same one day. 

My other big inspiration for the approach to this project came from re watching 'This is England 90' where a teacher talks about Henri Cartier-Bresson in one of Shaun's photography classes ironically. HCB is a widely famous and acclaimed street photographer and one of the founders of magnum photos. His most famous contribution to the art form probably being his revelation of the 'decisive moment' which postulates that every situation can be perfectly captured in a single image, provided it is taken at the decisive moment. This is not a constant, or scientific it relies on instinct and observation of the stimuli until the picture is set before your eyes ready to be captured in the moment there and then. This really stuck with me, as it is an idea I already practice but not consciously, I had not been thinking about the decisive moment but I am always waiting to take pictures of them whenever I have a camera in my hands in my personal work. I also think when dealing with people this is the way you will get to see them as they really are, and this is why I want to use this approach for my book; as it will allow me to show more intimate relationships and emotions without having to show a lot of pictures, or offer explanation for every image. HCB is also renowned for how eye catching and atmospheric his work is, something that I really want to replicate in my work. Finally I think this approach will work well for this project, as I am choosing to work with people whom I have a good relationship with and I think be aiming for the decisive moment, each picture will reflect both my reality and theirs at the same time without them interfering with one another. 

As for the more aesthetic/stylistic side of my project I have gone back to looking at the work of people who made me want to start taking picture full time, Like Kojo Dwimoh, Gunnerstahl, Wolfgang Tillmans and most importantly French graffiti artist turned photographer/director ABOVEGROUND. The first exhibition I ever went to was his first London showing of pretty much all his work up to November 2019 and I hadn't seen anything like it, wall to wall he filled up two shop floors with polaroids and big prints of candid portraits taken on his travels. You can see how he builds relationships with everyone he pictures, because none of them look very 'posy', everyone seems comfortable to have their picture taken or they do not even know he is there, however they all carry a story/impression all the same. I like the fact that you can see in to the world around an anonymous Frenchman without ever seeing his face or details about his life specifically, the story is always told through others. I want my book to be the same, I want to show my own life through what I see in the viewfinder. Equally this approach allows for every picture to be unique in its own way, as we cannot experience a moment more than once, so in some respects this project will be like a time capsule for me and the people in the book, for us to look back on in years to come. ABG does not mess around with the format of his pictures a lot in print or in exhibitions, he either leaves them as is or blows images up into individual page prints ranging from a4-a2. I will take this and use this in my own work as well, using the simpler conventions of an images natural composition to give it it's formatting, and making most of them nice and big on the page to the viewer has as much information as possible. Despite this I want to design this book to be accessible and affordable for as many people as possible, so I will just use an a4 portrait template for this project, as I feel that this is what will be most logistically proficient and familiar for the viewer, whilst still having enough space for my portraits to shine through.