For my project I decided to concentrate on the idea of human waste, more specifically the waste of life through mental or physical illness due to the effects of war.
My main influence was the photographer Don McCullin and his work in the Vietnam War. This work grabbed my attention due to the stark reality, strong emotion present and ideas behind each image. I wanted to be able to include the same sense of emotion and loss of person in my work.
The images themselves were staged poses like that of the photographs by Jeff Wall and Luc Delahaye but with the emotion similar to that of the work of McCullin. I wanted the subjects to appear to have lost all hope and faith in what they were doing and in the world around them. I chose to keep their faces hidden so as to suggest a sense of loss of being and of way of life, I wanted the body language to portray the emotion to be seen by the viewer.
I chose to shoot in black and white as I felt it allowed the raw emotion of the subjects to be the main focus of each piece of work. I keep the depth of field very shallow so as to emphasise that the subject is the main focus of each piece. However it is still apparent what the background surroundings are and how they relate to the subject themselves.
If I were to shoot this again I would like to experiment with the effects of using a large depth of field and see how it changes the relationship between viewer and subject. I would also like to try creating triptychs of each subject in different poses maybe with their full face showing to show an even deeper emotion.
My final contact sheet is below:
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