An Amalgamation

I have gone back to the start of my blog and re read my introduction. The main aim of this project was to produce a body of work which reflected my brother, who he is and in some way our relationship. The project however has developed beyond that as through my research and photo taking I have developed an appreciation and reminiscence of the family album. While briefly speaking to John about the project, I was relating my idea of exhibiting my work in an exhibition space which has touches of a family home and the images are small and the frames are varied. Consequently John mentioned putting the images into a family album. I began thinking about this idea and just how much fun it would actually be. I remember as a child flipping through the big bulky albums my mother had put together, slowly filling each book through the years. The images were stuck to the pages and protected by either plastic or translucent paper between each page. I even remember being instructed to be very careful with the thin paper as I turned it over, to make sure I didn’t rip it. So much importance was put to these images with the memories of specific occasions on them, because they were so valuable. My mother didn’t keep negatives, there was no intention of re printing and there were no backups, just the albums, which were stored away into a cupboard in the wall unit that is barely ever been opened really. And even more significant is the fact that it hasn’t been refilled in a long long time, moreover I wonder if a new album will ever be squeezed into that cupboard.

I was thinking about the family album idea and the exhibit idea and I couldn’t really choose. I then began to think, perhaps I could do both, where the images are published into an album but they are also exhibited in a space, yet still I wasn’t content because I wanted it to be just one main thing for some reason, even though I know people exhibit work and publish books all the time. I was heading down that road when I finally came up with an idea which is my favourite and it’s an amalgamation of the two. The idea is again to produce an exhibition space which has similar touches to a living room, this time sofas and arm chairs. In the room viewers will be able to pick up a copy of the photo album, which they then take over to the sofa sit down comfortably and look through, just as I used to as a child. This idea I believe relates best to my projects and works best in capturing the essence of the photo album, the changes which have occurred with technology and kinship.

Above I have quickly created another image on Adobe Photoshop to use as visual aid. The room is filled with comfortable seating, a couch, an arm chair and a bean bag; a variety of seating for viewers to take the album sit down, relax and view. In the corner of the room I have placed a wall unit, on the shelves of the unit I could place knick knacks from my actual wall unit at home and perhaps a framed family photograph or two. The viewer of the exhibition however is meant to retrieve the album from the cupboard themselves. The exhibition space becomes as important as the album itself, working together in making the project something of sentiment, of the home and of the past.