PORTFOLIOS

I am using my project “the winter garden” from last year. it was shot on the Mamiya rb67

Spent the day printing images for my portfolio with Lawrence, due to the problem with access to the printer and time constraints we were unable to do in-depth test strips for the images A couple of these images have issues with colour balance which I was unable to correct. I have included them in the portfolio because I believe their value in telling the narrative of the work overrides the issue. in a professional environment sometimes compromises have to be made to reach a dead line. I personally don’t mind the colour cast, I find them slightly etherial and would be happier including them them not.

I prepared all of the images at home and worked out all the sizing, dpi settings and canvas size, I chose a polaroid style farming because I like it and I guess in theory I would maybe include a signature or title at the bottom. I like the look most of all. there are 6 images here that I am really pleased with and its great to actually see them printed. actually felt quite excited!! probably going to use this project for the photobook module next year. I am also going to Update the website to include this new project.

here is a synopsis

The Winter Garden
At the end of my garden is an old barn where I have been hoarding “stuff” since my mothers death in 2005. This project is about the stuff in my barn and why I have held on to it for 15 years. I hadn’t been into the barn for years and it was full to the brim, as I stared working on this project I realised that really the objects in my barn represented my grief. My mothers old lamp shade, her dinner plate, the lid to one of her saucepans. Many of these things are covered with years of dust and cobwebs yet in some way I believed that my mother lived on in these everyday objects and that if I kept them close to me I would feel safe. These objects had become a wall that I had created to hide away from loneliness and heart break.
At first I believed that if I photographed these items it would be a way of me keeping them as a photographic memory and that this process would allow me to let them go, take them to the recycling centre. As the weeks passed, the harder I looked, the more I realised that these objects were meaningless. They were just things bought from shops that nobody really needed. In our society where consumerism is almost our new religion I too had mistakenly attached emotions to objects with no value. My mother was not inside the dark barn, she was not the genie in the lamp. In fact her life force was all around me, in my heart and outside in the living landscapes of beautiful Suffolk.
For me this project has turned out to be art therapy in its truest sense, it has given me chance to explore my grief and ultimately find strength and freedom.