Media: 35mm black & white film.
When I first moved to Caerleon I felt lost, lonely and I didn’t feel like I belonged. I wanted to portray these emotions through this project. I photographed all the subjects around Caerleon campus in forest/woody areas to give that sense of not belonging. As the project progressed, so did my ideas and I began to go down a slightly different route.
I wanted my work to have the same impact that Jo Spence and Trish Morrissey's work had and that was that people would feel the same emotions as I felt, through my photography. About halfway into the project I came across Lee Friedlander’s series of self-portraits, his objective was to find out who he was – at the time – as a white male living in the 1960’s through self-portraits. I then took on that concept of trying to find myself in Caerleon using the theme of feeling “lost” to begin with. Looking at Jason Evans’ work involving the “hidden” fruit caught my eye and inspired me to do something similar by making some of my belongings “belong” in the surroundings.
After I had shot my first few films, I realised that my photographs had a theatrical side to them, they began to look “staged.” I then tried to make my belongings “fit in” with the surroundings. When it came to looking at my work prints and choosing the final ones, I had to make the decision of either going down the “theatrical/staged” route or going down the “subtle” route. I chose the “subtle” look for my final 9 prints. In doing so I realised I had altered my concept slightly. I originally set out to make my clothing/keys/photos look like they didn’t belong to coincide with my feelings of not belonging in Caerleon. After a while, the more subtle the photographs became, the more the subjects began to “belong” in the surroundings, which coincides with how I began to feel. I now “belonged” in Caerleon.
This project has been a personal achievement more than anything, whilst experimenting with ideas I now have the sense that I belong here in Caerleon and I don’t feel as lost as I felt at the beginning of the project.
Here are my work prints:
Here are my final 9 prints:
