The First Photo Book

During my first year of my course I was given a brief to produce a photo book based on the theme "Modern Times". I wanted to express a theory that I have involving people having their photograph taken. In generally people tend to act different around cameras or want to be seen as a certain type of person or to have a certain emotion that does not portray how they actually look or feel. A fake surface is sometime screated. An example would be holiday photographs. We all love to smile in holiday photographs even if we are not happy because, when we look back at that memory we think we were happy and remember it as a happy time. It also helps to justify the money spent and the time away as a good decision made. I want to capture natural photographs of people in public and I feel the only way to do this is to take portrait shots without people knowing they are being photographed. In theory I will not capture many people smiling but in their own emotions and thoughts. Framing of the heads of the subjects leaving room above the head for their thoughts and emotions to remain. 

The idea was greatly influenced by the work of Philip Lorca Dicorcia, in particular the book “Heads” which features portraits of people in Times Square, New York being photographed by a flash without them realizing creating a very cinematic feel but natural emotions. This lead me onto the book “Tokyo Compression” by Michael Wolf which focused on the crammed Tokyo subways where people are transported like cattle with such little room their faces are pressed against the carriage windows with no room to escape from the camera. This inspired me to photograph everyday people in everyday situation but with natural emotions.

As I will be taking my photographs from a long distance from my subject without them realizing it was important to use a zoom lens. I did not use a tripod, as I would be easier to see from a distance. A lot of images were captured, as I wanted to almost capture particular emotions or more unusual shots of somebody in the middle of yawning or calling for a taxi for example.

Once I had captured all of the images I needed I had a little trouble with sequencing my book as the images are all very similarly composed with very similar exposures and lighting I felt like the images could work in many different orders well. I decided to base my sequencing on the colours of clothes and dominating colour in the background to slowly move from different similar colours instead of people. The idea of the people being random is almost part of the concept.