After the last few shoots I did in the two large tents at the Piccadilly camp I feel that I have enough photographs to choose from for the exhibition. But as I have previously discussed I think I'm going to showcase the photographs that I captured from Pete's tent instead of the last shoot I did drug addicts tent. The reason for this being, that Pete's tent is the best example of a normal person trying to make a life for themselves on the street that I have. Which means that when the viewer will look at the images they should hopefully feel more connected too the piece because they can recognise many of the objects that he has in his tent. Then when the viewer feels connected too the image is when they will start to open their eyes about homeless people being exactly the same as themselves, but who have just found themselves to be in a worse off position in life. I believe that even though I'm happy I captured the drug ridden tent, if I show it to the public as my exhibition piece, it will just reinforce some people stereotypical viewpoints that homeless people got themselves into this position and due to drugs they can't be bothered to do anything about getting themselves out of being homeless. Whereas I want my work to portray the 'humans' behind the statistics, and show the viewer that many homeless people were normal people with jobs and because of a few factors which they might not have had any control over they are now on the streets trying to make the best out of a bad situation.
So now I've decided which shoot I'm going to use pictures out of for the exhibition, I need to think about how I want my work to be presented. I have already began thinking about this when I listened to Julian Germaine speak about his latest exhibition 'Hidden Presence'. When looking at his exhibition piece's I thought that his larger prints meant that the viewer felt more involved and connected to the work, which is what I want my piece to do, to draw the viewer into the photograph. I also commented that frames around an image put a distance between the work and the viewer which is something that I don't want to do.
Last weekend I went to the Julia Margaret Cameron exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, because I wanted to look at how they displayed one of the most experimental and influential photographers of the 19th century's work. Looking at this exhibition would hopefully help influence my ideas about how I was going to display my work.
Cameron is one of the most famous and earliest women photographers, and had first received a camera as a gift from her daughter at the age of 48. She quickly put all her energy into the medium and within two years Cameron had sold and given her photographs to the South Kensington Museum which is now the Victoria and Albert Museum, who then gave her the use of two rooms for a portrait studio.
After 150 years of first presenting her work the V&A put on this exhibition to celebrate her best know images. The images I took from this exhibition are seen below.
After looking round the exhibition, it backed up my first thoughts about not wanted to put my images in a frame because it puts distance between the viewer and the photograph. One image that I really liked from her exhibition was 'Julia Jackson 1867' which is the first photograph out of these three. Firstly I think the image and the subjects face really draw the viewer into the image which I find really encapsulating, which is then increased due to the large scale of the print to further this engagement. I also like how the image has been placed directly onto the wall/ doorway, because it gives me the feeling that Julia Jackson is alive and fixed in time. Whereas the images that were in frames on the wall, give me the idea that they are precious relics that are from the past.
I think this exhibition was very useful for me to be certain that I wanted to firstly print my images very large to grab the viewers attention and hopefully transport them inside the tent that they will be viewing so they feel connected to the image. And secondly not using a frame to display the image, instead I want to place my image directly onto the wall so my exhibition piece hopefully is fixed in the 'now' instead of feeling like one is looking at the past. The idea of fixing the image in the 'now' is important to my work, because homelessness is an ongoing problem which is only set to get worse, so I want to make sure the viewer feels like they are engaging and connecting with a current problem, not one in the past.
In terms of what images I am going to use, I've decided to use the two best wide angle images from inside Pete's tent which show off the complete tent interior. The tripod was in the same position for each image, but they were taken in completely opposite directions, so the viewer will be able to see the view one way and then the other which should make them feel like they are actually inside the tent as they view it.
My next job is to look into large format printing, and decide how big I want my images to be.