Exploring the term ‘front’, evolving from widely accepted opinions on social media to more personal thoughts surrounding food production, media and the climate.
ENTRAPPED
Placing myself behind a plastic screen, I pushed my face against it as if I was stuck behind. Then, edited these into a screenshot from my personal Instagram feed, creating the sense of being physically stuck behind the screen, creating a fake persona.
Looking back on it, this doesn’t cover a very personal subject considering the mass amount of attention that social media and mental health have gained over the past few years, but I still see it as a strong start to exploring the title further. Using this as the initial idea allowed me to brainstorm both ideas surrounding personal fronts as well as the fronts put up by large organisations, which were used throughout the completion of this project.
HIDDEN AWARENESS
One of the most common questions I get about this image is ‘why?’ which ends up with me responding ‘why what?’, due to the amount of things out of the ordinary occurring in the frame; the wine? The open fridge? The reflection? To me, this image perfectly portrays someones struggle with addiction and awareness to their own personal issues when faced directly with them.
I feel this was a strong way to continue exploring a personal front, keeping it to a widespread topic many people can relate to which I could later develop into my own personal thoughts. Visualising the idea that addiction can be recognised but ignored by the same person, allowing the problem to expand and get worse. I attempted to do this by using the mirror to my advantage, and masking over the reflection of my back to show the reflection of me looking back at myself, which has a connotation of me looking through myself as if I don’t exist between the reflection and the source.
PERSONNEL
A fitting transition from looking at myself, to my new found mistrust in the food industry. Being 18, I knew people who worked in restaurants; most of which are not a huge fan of their jobs but it’s a form of income. I went to these people with a rolled up white sheet of paper to try and keep a tidy backdrop, which worked out better just being a crease in the background adding to the mess of any college students life. Anyway, I took a simple portrait with little set up time so I could capture their true facial expression when work was mentioned, and asked for a quote about how they think of their workplace. All of these quotes were negative, generally helping me progress this project towards the food industry with a strong bias in my thought process.
DISSAPOINTMENT
For this shoot, I focused on the idea of shooting the contrast between advertisements for fast food and the reality of what these products look like. Using an external flash aimed directly at the food for harsh lighting, the grease of the products was highlighted further than it would be regularly, making it stand out. I used a flash directly on the subject because when it was aimed slightly away the images were more matte and less saturated.
The products in the images were left as a brought them and unaltered throughout the process of photographing them, and I feel this helps to convey the exaggeration that is communicated through all advertising. I had originally planned on tearing between the two images and lining them up physically, but found that keeping it entirely digital made the images fit more into the already existing advertisements and product shots.
CONSEQUENCES OF HUNGER
Using a triptych format, I took a small series of images from different food vendors in my local town. These images include one of their products, the shop front, and what I have tried to portray as the environmental impact of their products. I deliberately created them in this order so that the eye can follow from a good looking product to the company its from almost as a form of advertising, which is then dampened down from seeing it littered on the streets.
OVERCONSUMPTION
For this shoot, I combined a self portrait with an image of a McDonald’s advert, which encourages the idea of gambling along with food that has negative health effects. The Monopoly campaign encourages gambling to the customers due to the fact that they can buy something with the risk of winning a reward out of it.
Using the advert from this campaign and placing it upside down, as if it is exploding out of my mouth shows the overconsumption that the company want during the period of this campaign to gain a high profit – without any consideration for the customers health. This same thinking can be used for most fast food campaigns, which include little warnings about any effects on personal wellbeing from their products.
WASTED
This links to my chosen title of front because at a quick glance it just looks like food, however when looked at closer you can see the message that I am trying to put across about unhealthy food. I put a triptych of close alongside the wider image, to show how gross food wastage is, hopefully reminding them to be more careful about their portions and usage of ingredients before they use them all.
Use of the conical flask gives indication of unknown chemicals used in food, yet these are still consumed globally without any thought. I feel that this prop was used well because it fits into the mess, staying hidden in a similar way to unnecessary ingredients used in a variety of products.
PACKAGED
Images taken at a local farm, and wrapped in cling form to portray their future of being packaged and sold in a shop. I tried to wrap the images in a way that looked like the animal was pushing against it from underneath, by stretching and manipulating the creases to follow out of the animals face, showing a struggle of the general life of these animals and how it’s far from what they want to experience.
PLANET IN PAIN – Final Piece
For the final piece in this project, and my A Level, I felt the need to let any hint of an idea in my brain come out into a physical form – very fitting for the topic of climate change I based it on. I spent weeks collecting clippings of newspapers relating to the climate crisis, both negative and positive to show that we are making some sort of progress towards having a sustainable life. Scientific research and imagery relating to diet, obesity kills, go vegan (personal lifestyle choice, felt necessary to be included), as well as a poem which I’d manage to pull together.
Firstly, all of this is chucked on a notice board as a collage to make it seem like theres some form of organisation behind the climate crisis (which there was not at the time of making this, Extinction Rebellion’s first protests happening around the same time). I pinned images to the board in little plastic baggies, connotations of drugs and addiction spread over the entire piece from this. Depending on the image, you gain a different insight to whats going on – theres a mix of those out on the streets trying to save the planet, those who chuck everything everywhere that isn’t a bin, and the scraps of meat on sale, looking like a complete mess on the shelf.
It’s a lot to take in, there’s a lot to read, images to try and interpret – but the mess in this piece replicates my state of mind during the creation, a thought out and well organised mess of too many things to fit in one piece; but I went for it anyway and I’m proud of this brainchild.
Zak Michaelwaite 