In Tuesday’s class, we were divided into small groups and bring a camera each to the outside of the campus, the class activity was to use varies ISO; aperture and shutter speed to record things on the street. I was quite surprised that how the same locations can produce different photo styles, each of us in the group look at things from a different angle which made this series more abundant.
Project Brief 1 – I decided not to continue with Nobuyoshi Araki for the Project Brief 2, I have never looked at him from a deeper angle other than this presentation, the first time he grabbed my attention was not by his works but his quote: ‘My photos are my diary. Every photo is no more than the representation of a single day. And each day contains the past and the projection into the future. That’s why I feel compelled to indicate the date on every picture I take.’ and then I saw his first series of artwork — ‘Araki’s cat’, he started to take photos for his cat since it first arrived until it dies because of the old age. However, once I started to follow and study him from lots of different angles, I found I do not agree with him that ‘Art is all about doing something you shouldn’t’. It’s true that everyone will not have the same answer or perspective on what is art, but I believe that art should be use to record what you really like or motivate you.
I am still looking for a direction for the next project brief, but I guess what I have learned from Araki is we need to have a strong, clear concept and storyline for a series of photographs, this will enhance your audience to understand the work.