Personal Project Proposal

Leading the way ...in the footsteps of Dad

PERSONAL PROJECT PROPOSAL

AIM: To explore the concept of memory via photography and my interest in family history.

WHY?

My mother in law was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s recently and this brought back memories of my own personal experience of coping with my mother’s senile dementia. I remember her looking at a collection of photographs that I had brought together to help trigger her memories of family times past. Studying a picture of my father taken before he died twenty years earlier, she commented that she hardly remembered him and what he looked like. But she did recognise him.

I also remembered at the time, colleagues who used to conduct reminiscence sessions for elderly people in care homes telling me how the sense of smell triggered memories much longer than visual impressions. Had we had more time together I would have brought together an ‘album’ of scents and smells to trigger our conversations of things past.

Leading the way ...in the footsteps of Dad

When my father died nearly thirty years ago very suddenly, we were left with our own personal memories and the shared photographic memory captured in family photo albums. More recently  have been researching my family history, I realised that there was very little trace of my father other than a few black and white images from the early days of his marriage and fading colour ‘snaps’ taken over the years to record family events rather than my father.

Is it possible to ‘conjure’ up memories of my Dad through photographic images that trigger more than a visual memory? How to conjure up the memory of someone not there? There are a number of issues, for example:

-          Finding traces left behind that could be used for this project i.e. physical evidence of having made an impact

-          Using places / people/ objects that trigger personal memories that have no meaning to an outsider

-          Achieving images that give a ‘sense’ of a person to those who never knew them

OUTCOME

A collection of images displayed as a book which give a sense of who my Dad was - images on a personal theme drawn from my interest in family history.

Ideally these photographs will also create a visual ‘memory’ that can be experienced by ‘outsiders’ and maybe trigger other   family memories of their own.

HOW?

Certain themes instantly come to mind when I think of my father. These are my starting point. I intend to explore the possibility of a central theme/focus running through each image and how reproducing past memory as a past image or reworked in today’s world and lifestyle might work in the context of the outcome that I am trying to achieve.

PROJECT PLAN

1) Shooting script

Themes to be explored

1.      Memory - here and now or referenced by old photographs

·         Shadow on the wall?

2.      Family – father  ( died in 1922 –no extant photograph but sibling- step sister still alive )

·         Portraits?

3.      Workplace – greengrocer/ nursery man/ gardener

·         Revisit a black and white photo of my Dad taken in a greengrocer’s shop by taking the same kind of image today using a willing greengrocer in same pose?

·         Smell of hot sun in greenhouses full or ripening tomatoes?

·         Autumn colour of chrysanthemums (Dad grew these commercially as well as tomatoes)?

4.      Wartime  - RAF / Army ( Burma ) –memorabilia

5.      Character – artistic / creative/ introspective

·         The artist /sketching trips?

6.      My childhood memories – cigar smoke, Satsumas, Christmas?

7.      Sense of place - where does he fit in?

·         Referencing his father – war memorials/ commemoration

The images will be colour or monochrome as appropriate to the intended outcome and likely to be a mix of representational/ still life/ interpretative / photo journalistic approaches  again dependent on the best way to achieve a particular interpretation.

2) Work plan (March –April 2014)

Research  

·         Reading re concept of memory / trace / photographs

·         Family image research

·         Locations for photo shoot

             Shooting schedule   March 2014

Week 1   (10-16)

·         Outdoor shoot:

o   Workplace   Portsmouth

o   Character     Bosham

·         Indoor shoot:

o    Childhood memories

 

Week 2   (17-23) 

·         Outdoor shoot:

o   Workplace   Portsmouth  

o   Character     Bosham

o   Family & Sense of place Worthing

·         Indoor shoot: 

o   Childhood memories/Memory /Wartime

 

Week 3   (24- 31)

·         Outdoor shoot:

o   Workplace   Portsmouth  

o   Character    Bosham

o   Sense of place 

o   Character

·         Indoor shoot:

o   Wartime / Memory

 

Editing / processing images  Weeks 1-4

10 March – 6 April

Photo book preparation   Weeks 5-7

6 – 27 April

Project submission Week 8   (April 28-30)