My mind seems to ramble lately about place..I continue to question what that means to me. I began to think about my childhood homes but that no longer feels like my place rather more of someplace I visit. So then what becomes my place? Is it where I currently live just because it's my address? Is that ok that my sense is more than one place especially since I grew up knowing more than one place as my home? What is it then I'm trying to say is it about home or place are they interchangeable? How then can I further push my sense of place visually, an idea I had this weekend was to put portraits with places? is that really getting at my own sense of place. I need to further investigate the self-portraits.
I met with my mentor Jesseca Ferguson for the first time last Thursday. It was a good first meeting she gave me some other artist's and books to look at. I have been photographing myself in my surroundings and objects within my apartment and outside and in my neighborhood. Jesseca suggested pushing beyond just straight photography spreading out my ideas on the wall of my studio and make different parts of my home. We discussed some images I had put into two grids on my studio wall. I challenged myself to photograph one roll of film inside my apartment and another one outside in one afternoon. I am currently pushing that further by shooting one roll a day for an entire week. Today I did not get all the way through my 36 exp roll but my plan is to finish it tomorrow. The challenge for me is the light, I photographed this evening a little with flash. This should be an interesting experiment.
This weekend I spent some time outdoors but also watched Edward Burtynsky Manufactured Landscapes, it was a beautiful documentary. I really loved what he said at the end of the film that while his work is making a political statement, he wants the work to be more about the conclusion the viewer makes rather than pushing his work as a political statement.