The concept of my final major project is surrounding mental health conditions. As someone that has suffers from BPD (borderline personality disorder) I know what it is like to suffer from their own mental health. I want my photography to tackle important and necessary issues within society that need to be spoken about. I initially approached the subject with my own preconceptions and finished the project with a lot more knowledge surrounding the topic of mental health. Throughout the project I have learnt a lot of new skills, for example, working with a medium format camera. I used many different materials such as the Canon 5d Mark IV, the Mamiya 67RB medium format camera with 100ISO film, a polaroid camera, the screen-printing equipment, and many other different materials. All the materials used are associated with Photography as most of them are cameras, but the screen printing can be associated with photography due to you can put a photograph on the screen to be able to print onto the material of your choosing. I thought that my final images were to a high standard and I was really impressed with how they turned out in the end. I thought that they were better than I originally thought that they would turn out when I was experimenting with all of the images that I took. There were some barriers with the main one being my own illness, I had many different illnesses throughout the time of my FMP. I simply overcame this by mainly doing research whilst I was ill and anytime I had spare when I wasn’t ill I put it into doing practical work. If I was to do this project again, I would ideally have more time to fulfil all of my practical work when I would like to do so. I would also make sure that I was doing as many shoots as possible and refining my work to a higher standard to allow me to be able to improve in the future. I would also like to display my work differently if I had extra time and money I would have done a bigger piece of the image with no mouth and I would love to use this idea further potentially when I finish the course/after the course.
Due to the topic of mental health being quite a sensitive subject, I needed to ensure that all of my work was maintaining being ethical and ensuring that I was being morally correct. For example, it would have been a bit of an awkward subject if I were to photograph someone about to commit suicide. In addition, to prevent others feeling bad surrounding their images being used. To prevent this, I took images of myself so I know that there would be no repercussions of posting the images elsewhere. Unfortunately I know that my work may not have been sustainable by using a lot of paper, plastic and other materials. This is something which I would need to take note on in my future studies, potentially looking at how my work could be made more environmentally sustainable. I had some feedback off of my peers surrounding my work and below there is some feedback that I was given. Mark Fraser – “Well, Bradley what can I say, well it's dark really dark and I must admit to loving it. What you are trying to say comes across really well. The only thing I am going to say is can you do something happy next as I am starting to get a little traumatised. Well done mate.” Sarah Pritchard – “I mean this in the best possible way brad, but the longer I look at your work the more uncomfortable I feel. Particularly, the one with no mouth. It reminds me a bit of “i have no mouth and i must scream”, as it gives you that same feel of unease. I don’t know if that’s what you were going for, but it’s definitely something to write about. Either way good photos!” Ashley Brown – “Dark and powerful as always Bradley. I love how you have developed your style and you are producing such quality photographs. Can't wait to see what's next.” Overall, I feel like my work has been appreciated for what I wanted it to be. I feel like it has given the message across to the viewer how I wanted it to and I am impressed with my own work.
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Van Gogh Vincent Van Gogh was a post-impressionist painter who was known for his interesting use of colour to express emotions and feelings into his paintings. It was estimated that over his thirty-seven years of life he produced over 2000 pieces of art. He was born on the 30 March 1853 in the Netherlands. After his family was struggling financially, he decided to take his first job at the age of 16 where he began working in his uncle's art firm. His job at the art firm took him to places like London and Paris but he soon grew tired of his job at the art firm and was dismissed from his job in 1876. He soon became extremely interested in Christianity and became a preacher in Belgium for the mining community in the south. Four years later, Van Gogh had eventually decided to become an artist where he taught himself how to paint and draw whilst receiving money from his brother Theo to keep him afloat. In 1886, Van Gogh had moved in with his brother Theo to Paris where he had met many artists which can include Gauguin and Pissarro of which he became good friends with them. His style significantly changed from impressionism to become a lot brighter and lighter where he started to paint a substantial number of self-portraits. Two years later he moved to Southern France where he painted one of his most famous series to date; Sunflowers. During this time had had invited Gauguin to unite with him but soon after they began to argue where one nigh Van Gogh pulled out a razor and threatened Gauguin with it. He then became extremely remorseful of which he reacted with this by cutting off his own ear. This was one of the first signs of his mental health problems that were soon to affect Van Gogh for many more years to come. He began to spend time in hospital for his psychiatric illnesses where he had periods of depression, paranoia and inactivity. His time in hospital had influenced his own artistic voice leaving his art to become a lot brighter with more strong colours which reflected the countryside around him. Sadly in 1890, he suffered another period of depression and shot himself in the chest, of which he was rushed to hospital and sadly passed away two days later. Louis Wain Another painter which is thought to have had some mental illness was Louis Wain. Louis Wain was born in England in the August of 1860. Wain's mother was a carpet and embroidery designer, and his father was a traveller for a firm to do with textiles. Louis Wain started his career drawing animals and countryside's of which he had his own work then published in multiple journals that were made in the time. In 1884, one of Wains drawings of a cat was sold to The Illustrated London News. At this time, the Louis Wain Cat was popular which appeared in many prints, books post cards and many other materials. His cats are shown doing the same things that humans do for example, riding bicycles, playing cricket and engaging in school. Throughout all his fame, Wain was never financially wealthy where during the way, he became poor. Despite being known as been quite out there, he had developed signs of mental illness. He was a gentle man while at this time he became suspicious, angry and abusive. Later on in 1924, he was diagnosed as insane and was then committed to Surrey County Asylum. This was where he was discovered the following year and a campaign was made to allow him to be transferred to Bethlem Hospital, the better hospital at the time. Five years later Wain was transferred to Napsbury Hospital where he continued drawing until his life ended. He sadly suffered a stroke in November 1936 where he became bedridden in 1939 and was unable to speak. He then passed away on 4th July 1939 when he was 78 years old. He was then buried alongside his sisters Caroline and Josephine and his father. RationaleMental health is a growing science that affects over one quarter of the population in some way. As someone that has suffered personally with my own mental health, I feel like there is not enough education on certain mental health conditions. Mental health conditions such as anxiety and depression are more widely known to the public, but there are conditions like borderline personality disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder that are not widely known and have current stereotypes which are not completely true. For example, people with BPD are labelled as being manipulative, people with OCD are labelled as being clean freaks and people with PTSD must be people that have been to the war. This is something which I would love to develop further in this project to raise factual awareness of mental health conditions in a visual form, photography. Project ConceptIn this project, my aim is to raise factual awareness of mental health conditions such as BPD, OCD, and PTSD. Due to the public’s misconceptions around mental illness, some people are labelled as being negative things which they are not. Yes, these people have illnesses that change their behaviours in comparison to someone that does not have any mental health conditions, but it does not mean that they are any less human. Those with mental health conditions have feelings too. Those with mental health conditions have been through a tough time throughout their own journeys so why as a population are we making it even harder for them to not live but survive? During this final major project, I will be collecting research from different ranges of sources and providing myself with a wide range of inspirations to ensure that my outcome will meet the aim of this project. Evaluation MethodsThroughout my final major project, I will ensure that I am reflecting on all my work each week. I will do this using my Weebly by ensuring that I post onto my blog every week and reflecting on how this week has gone. In addition to self-reflection, I will be receiving feedback from my peers, the older generation, my tutors, and family members to ensure that I am keeping on track of what I need to be doing in the correct period. In addition to this, I will be ensuring that I am keeping up to date with my planner to ensure that I will be doing the correct thing at the correct time. I will ensure that I reflect on my project proposal each week. Exhibition OutcomesAs part of my own knowledge, I will be ensuring that I present my work in a visually appealing manner at the college exhibition. To do this, if I need to make stands for my photographs, I will ensure that I make these using the college’s laser cutter.
Unfortunately, I was unable to attend the exhibition. But, from the photographs that I got sent I was really impressed with how everyone's work turned out. Below is the photos from my peers work. Then my own work in the exhibition is shown below.
So after experimenting with different processes throughout the time doing the FMP, I looked through all of my work and I have weighed up the differences between each processes. I personally wanted to do the series all surrounding the general feelings of mental health and how it can affect people but when I did the experiment of editing the image but have it not having a mouth. I felt like this was menacing and really shown what the effects of mental health is for different people. This could affect others in certain ways. But the way I wanted to display this was by having the dark side of mental health to be portrayed to a viewer. Therefore, I chose the following three images to be shown in the exhibition. I feel like these images were really successful for what a viewer would want. I think that they are used to convey the message successfully. Before we were putting the images up for the exhibition, we had to create an artist statement mine is as follows: Access to Higher Education Diploma (Art & Design – Graphics, Media & Photography) Name: Bradley Graham-Whitehouse Title of work: I Tried to Scream Destination: Stafford BA (hons) Photography Bradley Graham-Whitehouse is an aspiring photographer who likes to experiment with varied mediums to produce images which have deeper meaning to bring light onto taboo subjects. During his FMP, he gave himself the subject of mental health. He decided to use different processes and cameras to allow himself to develop his own style of work. This short series of photographs were taken to show the emotional pain of mental health. Like many other artists, he uses self-portraits within his work to help him process how he has felt in the past with his mental health. He likes to explore the darker side of mental health to encourage others to talk about their mental health. So for my first shoot, I reallly wanted to look at multiple exposures as I felt that this would have been a very useful tool for my theme of mental health as I thought that it would be able to capture different emotions that someoone may feel during a mental health crisis. Below is the set up of the shoot. If I am completely honest, the only editing that I did was turning them into black and white. This was because I didn't want anything to take away from the message of the shoot because I feel like the colour may distract a viewer from the whole meaning of the shoot. Below is a final photograph. However, during this shoot I used one photograph and took away the mouth of myself and made it to appear like I was trying to scream but I couldn't. I seemed to really like how this turned out and I wanted to try to do it with other people and make this a series, but I couldn't seem to get any other photos to turn out as good as this one did. But this is definitely something in which I would like to improve on and use further down the like in higher education.
Throughout my Final Major Project, I needed to ensure that I was maintaining a high level of personal safety. Below is some risk assessments for my work within the darkroom and the studio. So this was my very first experience using a medium format camera and I was worried but excited to use it for the first time. The medium format camera that I used was the Mamiya 67RB medium format camera with 100iso film. Due to this being the first time using it, I didn't really want to overcomplicate the process, therefore, I had the help from my peer Mark Fraser. He helped me to take the photographs that I needed. Below is all the images that I took before and after developing them in the darkroom. Again, I love doing things like this in the darkroom as I like to cross all of the processes to allow the viewe to almost capture their attention as a striking type of way.
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