Individual Project: Initial Ideas 2- Portraits, Possessions and Relics

Following on from my previous post this one will explain and expand on my secondary idea. The driving force behind this was the work of Sophie Calle and the aesthetics were designed to be similar to the large-format photographs of Chuck Close. The idea was to pose the question "what is the most precious object you own?" to an older person, and then photograph them holding in the object, preferrably partly obscured by their hand. This was designed to show the idea of transition as the experience of life and the physical objects which hold a sentimental importance towards the end of the experience.

I listed Sophie Calle as an influence on this idea after having seen her project The Blind, in which she asked the question "what was the most beautiful thing you have ever seen" to people who were blind. (left) The concept for this is similar the the way a vox-pop functions in tv, the same question being posed over again and again with varying answers. The idea of the vox pop could also lead this project into video.

Chuck Close's influence is quite plainly an aesthetic one. I particularly liked his large format portraits which he then painted using a grid-technique so as to be photo-realistic paintings on an incredibly large scale. (right)

The reason I did not pursue this idea much further than concept and artist research was that I found, after having posed the hypothetical question to several family members their answers were invariably quite intangible things or other family members. For example, asking my mother what the object she felt was the most precious thing she owned was, she replied that it was myself and my sister.

This posed a problem as i had intended a series of portraits of singular individuals holding objects, rather than some quite cliched family portraits. As well as this, the title which I had planned for this project, "Relic", leant itself quite easily to images of older persons clutching some slightly obscured object, for obvious reasons, but not to group portraits of family members.

It also exposed quite a distinct difference in people's conceptions of the notions of monetary value and sentimental value. For example, I found that people could quite easily give the answer to the question "what is the most valuable object you own?" to which the answer, in terms of monetary worth, was usually some item of jewellery or technology, however, the question of a "precious object" was far more problematic to answer.

Thus i decided to focus on my polaroid work over this project as I found it far easier to get off the ground, the subject was far more plentiful and I could think of many more ways to develop and further it.