Idea
Every Culture has there own set of traditions, which are passed within families from generation to generation, however these tradition seem to be dying out within certain cultures, with children being more interested in sitting in front of the television or computer rather than learning things that there parents or grandparents would have done to pas the time, such as sewing, playing games in the garden or going to the park with friends. Also with people becoming busier nowadays they seem to have less time to cook a nutritious meal for their family in the evening and will resort to ready meals, take out or dining out. This is very sad as soon people won’t have any of the skills that previous generations have had.
Having thought about this I would like to explore the traditions of England in a series of Photographs.
I have also been looking at photo manipulation and war propaganda to get an idea of style in which I think would work well with the content of the photograph, and catch the audiences attention.
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/theartofwar/prop/home_front/
Also if a person from an older generation was to see the photographs in the style of war propaganda it would trigger memories of the war for them.
Posters such as, ‘Your country needs you’, ‘women’s land army’ and ‘keep mum she’s not so dumb’ are all very iconic and recognisable by most people. These are all in style I would consider using
I have also looked at the work of Peter Kennard, who has used photo manipulation, which I have found intriguing, due to the use of two different people to put across political messages.
I would like to try and use both of these styles to put across the message of traditions dying out.
Great British Traditions
- Sewing/knitting
- Cooking/baking
- ‘A woman’s place is in the kitchen’
- The man of the house is the bread winner
- Women should stay at home with the children
- No sex before marriage
- A woman should be married in white
- Afternoon tea/drinking tea
- Monarchy
- Games/dancing
My ideas
- A woman with a mixing bowl and wooden spoon in her hands, wearing 30’s/40’s style clothing, with her head and hands being portrayed as skeletal
- A woman sat on/leaning against a headstone, knitting. The ball of wool looking as though it is coming out of the ground.
- A man and a woman on a medal podium. The woman with a gold medal clutching a loaf of bread looking very proud, and the man sat on the second place step of the podium with a silver medal, looking saddened.
- A pregnant woman stood at the alter of an empty church, in a dark/black wedding dress.
- 2 women sat at a table with a smashed teapot, tea dripping all over, and mouldy scones on plates, with glasses of drinks in their hands talking, oblivious to what is on the table.
- A kitchen with a cooker missing, in the gap where the cooker once was, filled with empty pizza and take away cartons
Idea Developments
As I have been looking at a lot of photo shop work and video animation work as well, so for this reason I have been thinking of how I can develop my photographs and ideas into video animations.
For memory I decided to look at how traditions are dying out. I have been thinking of how I could turn some of them into video animation pieces. They would only be short pieces of the photographs morphing into other representations of the photograph.
- The photograph of the woman baking. As I said in my original idea, I would create a photograph of a woman stood in a kitchen baking, but with her head and hands represented as skeletal.
To make this into a video animation, I would have the picture of a woman baking and slowly have her head and hands morph into skeleton, and then slowly disintegrate. I think this would work well and could get across the point that traditions are dying out, more than the photo on its own.
- For the photo that would show the woman as a breadwinner, it could be produced to show the man as the breadwinner and the woman sat looking not bothered and satisfied with her life. Then slowly morphing into the woman as the breadwinner and the man looking very sad and annoyed. It could then be taken a step further so that the man started to shrink until he eventually vanishes.
This would show that women once relied on men for everything and were satisfied with their lives but men are not happy and feel powerless now that women no longer need them
I would display these photographs/video animations at an exhibition by a projector or on small screens. Or they could be displayed as a series of photographs showing the change and progression.
