Image Rationale - Identity

Identity is something that we all have to face and discover, and I feel like this is different for everybody. Some people define their identity through their race, class, gender or other basic definitions of a person. Other's search for groups to belong to, other's just fall into anything and tend to find their own identity throughout the course of their life, with no difficulty. This is such a complex topic, and I wanted to explore people's identity through their hobbies, so I used one of my room-mates as my model, who happened to be in a band playing base. Music is his passion, he studies it at university and plays outside of school too, and in a lot of ways I would imagine he would identify himself as a musician. So this is how I wanted to represent him.

''Modern societies begin to offer a wider range of social roles. Possibility to start 'choosing' your identity rather than being born into it.''

I wanted to make this a montage of photographs into one image to try and represent the movement whilst he plays guitar, bringing the image to life a little more. I thoroughly enjoyed exploring the topic of identity, and think that it is definitely something I would like to do again in the near future. 

Here is the final image:

Image Rationale - Voyeurism and Surveillance

I decided to photograph something alongside the topic of surveillance for this piece, as I feel this is an interesting topic and wanted to learn more about it. As I walked down the street in the centre of leeds, I started to notice the amount of security cameras watching people as they walked by. The suggestion that we are the most watched country in the world is definitely a relevant one. So I decided that i wanted to focus my photograph on surveillance around shops, as people usually don't even tend to acknowledge the cameras or the fact they are being watched constantly. 
I decided to take my photographs from a high point of view, and edit them so that they have the same grainy colourless quality that security cameras so often do. And I wanted to take more than one photograph and blend them into one image to show the vast amount of images these cameras get, without the subjects knowing about it. 

Surveillance:

1. Close observation of a person or group, especially one under suspicion.

2. The act of observing or the condition of being observed.

I also feel that by using multiple photographs in one image, I am showing the amount of cameras that are in that area as well. 

Here is the final edit of the image:

Image Rationale - Consumerism

I have chosen to explore this topic because not only do I find the Consumerist theories interesting, but this is one of the biggest issues of today's society, and I feel that it is a relevant and interesting theme to explore at this particular moment in time because of this. 
We believe that through consumption we can achieve a sense of happiness that we are always longing for, substituting the real thing for material possessions we do not require. Every day, people are purchasing extortionately priced items, as shopping gives us a sense of joy, and therefore we believe that by buying these expensive products we are happy. However this is just an illusion formed by those in charge of advertising and selling. We are constantly told through hidden marketing techniques that we not only desire these items, but that we need them. 
Like the qualities of a magpie, people are attracted to shiny jewels, expensive technology, mobile phones, anything with a large price tag. And so this is what I decided to focus this particular image on, showing how extortionately expensive material possessions have grown to become.

A quote from the lecture that I thought was interesting and relevant for my photographic piece was an un-named and undated one - 'You are not what you own'

I found a jewellery shop in Leeds which sells incredibly expensive items, and thought that this would be an interesting subject to photograph due to the small nature of the shop and the incredibly high end products they were selling. Showing that it is not only designer stores that sell these items, but even just small high street shops as well. 

Here is the final image:

Image Rationale - Subcultures

Subcultures have been a major part of societies for many years. From the skating subculture, to graffiti, to mods and bikers, there have been so many methods of showing your individuality and these have all developed massively as time has progressed. 
One of the main subcultures in today's society is the drug culture, especially in Leeds amongst young people. I decided to base my photograph on this particular topic as I feel it is something that is commonly seen among people my own age and therefore is more personal for myself to relate to.
''A subculture is a group of people with a culture that that differentiates them from the larger culture to which they belong'' My image is exploring this definition, trying to document the drug culture and sum it up in one image.
I decided to use multiple images into one frame to try and explore more of the subculture, as I found it very difficult to actually sum up the whole subculture in one photograph. I did this by trying to capture, detail shots alongside relationship ones, in order to represent not only the subject, or the drug, but even the environment as well. 
I began to look at photographic projects on smoking and drug culture, and came across 'Medicine' by Robyn Tworney. She was trying to document the usage of Cannibis in America, and I found her project both conceptually inspirational as well as technically. In particular, I liked this Photograph of hers:

I then went on to do my own photograph, making sure to try and lay it out so that the concept was clear and the composition was visually interesting as well. Here is my final image:

Zygmunt Baumann - Identity

It was discussed by Lars Dencik that race, gender, country or place of birth, family and social class are now becoming less important when trying to establish a person's identity. At the same time though, there is a longing for new groups to be formed in which one can identify themselves with and facilitate. The idea of interpreting one's identity through definitions such as race or social class is an increasingly outdated one, for there are much more intricate sources of identifying a person that do not accommodate for stereotyping.

Bauman also discusses the idea that due to the rise in social technology, we are losing the ability to enter into spontaneous interaction with 'real' people. these virtual communities that we find online only create an illusion of intimacy and pretense of community. They are not in any way a substitute for having a conversation with a person in real life. If anything, these online communities only make coming to terms with your own personal identity much more difficult than it would have previously been.

Andy Hargreaves notes that people walk around talking to themselves, with the characteristics of a paranoid schizophrenic, completely ignorant of their surroundings. He suggests people no longer use their small amounts of free time during the day to think, but instead numb their thoughts by scouring the internet, searching for ''evidence that someone, somewhere may need or want them.'' (Bauman, 2005, 25). Technology not only affects what we do now, but also how we think.

In contradiction to what can be witnessed in modern day 'city strollers', Georg Simmel's strollers of the city streets (often referred to as urban strollers) were noted to have taken a distance from what they saw and watched in the city. ''They visited the theatre without joining it's company'' (Bauman, 2005, 26). they observed people and situations in the city, but without interfering. Erving Goffman, alongside Hargreaves, described an inventory of 'civil inattention stratagems', a series of documented gestures and body movements one uses when interacting with a stranger to signal their desire to stay distant and uninvolved. Simmel's urban strollers and Goffman's practitioners did not search for 'someone, somewhere who needs or wants them', but instead had this comfort in their homes and workplaces, ready to need and want when required.

Thanks to the advancement in mobile technology, we no longer need Goffman's code of civil inattention, ''we parade our detachment from the street we walk, no longer needing the elaborate etiquette. Switching on the mobile, we switch off the street.'' (Bauman, 2005, 25). We use technology as a shield from real life interaction, no longer feeling the urgency to connect with the people or the environment we're in. 

Citizen Photo Journalism

As technology has developed so extensively over the last century, it is only to be expected that 'citizen journalism' would be on the rise as well. Almost everyone (in particular in the USA and UK) currently have mobile phones with cameras attached to them or even just small digital cameras, meaning that there are more and more photographs and videos documenting events globally from an amateur's perspective.
You can share images, videos and files almost instantaneously thanks to the uprise of social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. This means that when an event occurs, people all around the globe are fully aware of what has happened through citizens viewpoints of people who witnessed the event happening.
Because these images and videos have come from the general public and not journalists or professional photographers, they are almost always completely objective and reliable sources.
One of the largest demonstrations of citizen journalism in 2013 was the bombing at the Boston Marathon. This event was vastly popular and there was a large amount of people who attended. Because the bomb went off near the finish line, there were hundreds of people, both journalists and citizens who actually caught the explosion both with video and photography.

Here is a photograph from the event that shows citizen journalism in action:

This photograph was taken by a viewer from one of the office blocks on the side of the track. You can tell from the quality of the image that it was taken on something like a mobile phone from the pixelated grainy aesthetic. Also the composition and framing of the image is not very photographic, the 'shooter' was obviously just trying to document what was clearly an emotional event. 

It has been suggested that social networking is now used as a method of dealing with trauma, sharing your own personal version of the event with people who have also experienced it is used as a way of dealing with the emotions that have come with witnessing the atrocity.
As journalists often incorporate their own emotional responses to documented events, having a completely objective outlook is not only good for the knowledge of the public, but also the police, and in the past it has actually been incredibly helpful in capturing criminals, particularly in the incident where a group of men bombed the tube in 2012. The 4 men involved were captured entering the tube, and all their faces were clearly identifiable, leading to their identification and eventual capture and prosecution.

Citizen journalism continues to grow more and more as technology advances and I believe that in a lot of ways this is an incredible thing. We are living in a society whereby technology is a major part of life, where sharing is instantaneous. If things continue to progress at the speed which they have done, it is only fair to assume that in the near future the results will be incredible. We will no longer have our heads in the sand, and will be completely in the know about major and minor events across the globe, with photographic evidence from reliable sources.