APPLIED PRACTICE - UNIT 33
Research:
FIND THREE ARTISTS/ PHOTOGRAPHERS THAT CONNECT AND HELP TOWARDS MENTAL HEALTH
ARTIST 1: JESSICA WALSH
JESSICA WALSH
Jessica Walsh, Born October 30th, 1986 in New York. Walsh started off with coding and joining websites together for pre payed work at the age 11, she was born in New York but grew up in a small town in Connecticut. She grew older and went on to study graphic design at Rhode Island school of Design. One of the popular social campaign’s Jessica has done was titled #JessicaWalshHasNoFilter, and has recently been updated to #SorryNoFilterImages as it includes work from more artists and provides a broader audience.
#SORRYIHAVENOFILTER
#SORRYIHAVENOFILTER
Jessica Walsh published her own website where she has developed all of her self empowering designs over different items that she would be able to sell so her prints would be more advertised. She's done clothing items such as hoodies, hats, tops, shirts jackets and denims. Whilst taking it further to developing her designs onto house hold items such as pillows and mugs, whilst also printing them onto pins and phone cases.
I think this is a really good way for her to get her message out, because once other people see these items that people are buying they are going to be seen by more and more people, her work is all bold colours but her work also has very empowering and powerful messages on. It could be the slightest print with the tiniest bit of writing but all her work has emotion and feeling behind it and its obvious to see this is something this artist is passionate about. She's trying her best to get a message across and she is achieving this really well.
ARTIST 2: ISAIAH & TAYLOR
ISAIAH & TAYLOR
The first artist I payed the biggest interest in is Isahia and Taylor, they created a series of work based on isolation. They did this series of work to show how it feels to live with a chronic illness. They got a model to dress in a full body black suit to show that this is a mysterious person who nobody knows. They are trying to make the image come across as that this person is invisible, and nobody around understands that person. “ illustrate the unseen, daily challenges and ever-present shadow worn by the people that live with chronic illness.” Isaiah and Taylor [online] Available from: https://www.stocksy.com/blog/living-in-shadow-with-isaiah-taylor/ [18.10.2019] This was a campaign that shared the story of a lot of mental illnesses.
Project Proposal - UNIT 33
During this unit myself and a selected few others of the group are going to be looking into insecurities in the real world, we are going to be looking at real people, with real insecurities. We are going to look further into how insecurities have an effect on our mental health, inclusivity, visible insecurities, mental and relatable insecurities. As well as looking into this we are going to try and discover why each person is made to care about these issues that we all have to deal with on a day to day basis. We are going to try and discover how what things you can do to try and improve the negative thoughts you have about yourself and turn them around to be positive. Trying to change a mindset is a hard challenge but it is possible. Everybody has insecurities, trying to narrow them down to what actually makes us all feel insecure may be a challenge. Your insecurities are a feeling you get when your body doesn't have much confidence in a certain aspect. Some insecurities people are able to get on with their day to day life with but for some people it can get to the stage where its hard to even do a day to day task and can make drastic effects on relationships with other people. “Insecurity can also be seen with other conditions such as narcissism, schizophrenia and borderline and paranoid personalities.” [online] Available from: https://www.goodtherapy.org/blog/psychpedia/insecurity [01-29-2016] this is a quote that proves there is a lot that insecurities can effect, more than your mental state and relationships.
The first artist I payed the biggest interest in is Isahia and Taylor, they created a series of work based on isolation. They did this series of work to show how it feels to live with a chronic illness. They got a model to dress in a full body black suit to show that this is a mysterious person who nobody knows. They are trying to make the image come across as that this person is invisible, and nobody around understands that person. “ illustrate the unseen, daily challenges and ever-present shadow worn by the people that live with chronic illness.” Isaiah and Taylor [online] Available from: https://www.stocksy.com/blog/living-in-shadow-with-isaiah-taylor/ [18.10.2019] This was a campaign that shared the story of a lot of mental illnesses.
The second artist I have paid an interest in is Jessica Walsh, Jessica Walsh, Born October 30th, 1986 in New York. Walsh started off with coding and joining websites together for prepaid work at the age of 11, she was born in New York but grew up in a small town in Connecticut. She grew older and went on to study graphic design at the Rhode Island School of Design. Katy Cowan (2019) Jessica Walsh on gratitude, avoiding comfort and why career advancement shouldn't be a goal for everyone [online] Available from: https://www.creativeboom.com/features/jessica-walsh/ [18.10.2019]. One of the popular social campaign’s Jessica has done was titled #JessicaWalshHasNoFilter, and has recently been updated to #SorryNoFilterImages as it includes work from more artists and provides a broader audience. Sarah Reid (2018) Sorry I have no filter [online] Available from: https://medium.com/@sarahreid_34359/sorry-i-have-no-filter-81285cda801f [18.10.2019].
I personally feel like this is a really strong project for me to look into, as we live in a generation where mental health is more looked upon than other health conditions, its a strong project to look into. Living in this era is a lot different compared to how it was a few years ago. Mental health is a really important project to look into. As well as raising awareness for this condition as it does “more than one in four people in each year” [October 2017] Mental health problems - an introduction. [online] Available from: https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/types-of-mental-health-problems/mental-health-problems-introduction/#.Xao7yudKiqA [18.10.2019] I think its brilliant that people are looking further into mental health now a days, as the suicide rates are increasing each year, espically in men this is a topic that should be looked upon more than anything as it is a mental problem that people are living with.
I am excited to look further into this unit and see what work I am able to come up with. Its a topic that means a lot to me personally so I am excited to see how this goes. Making this into a movement of our own and coming up with our own campaign is going to be a challenge but is going to be fun to see what we are able to come up with to try and at least prevent some negative thoughts in some people's minds.
SHOOT PLAN
For this unit my team and I gave decided we want to photograph different people in the same style as the images above. I really like the idea of having the words projected onto the model instead of physically writing it on them. We have decided we are going to have the words projected on the model in two different ways. We are having bad/negative words projected first of all with a dark background to give the image more of a dark, depressing look. We are using a projector we have found in the college and we have printed words onto a piece of transparent plastic, when we put this on the projector the light will print the words onto the models body/face.
EQUIPMENT WE ARE GOING TO USE
PLASTIC SHEET
PROJECTOR
CAMERA
Above, is images of the equipment we are using for this shoot, as well as all of the lighting methods to. I am going to get images of how the studio is going to be set up eventually. With the model, the lighting and all of the equipment in use.
For the background, we are going to have dark themed backgrounds so that they give the image a dark look. We want the background to be a big part of the image as its what makes the image. If we was to have a bright background it would give off a completely different kind of feeling.
HOW THE SHOOT WENT
So, we attempted doing our first plan, where we printed different words onto a plain piece of plastic, we thought printing the words and then using the projector to project them onto the models face would work, there was a few errors with this method and it didn't end up working the way we wanted it to. We tried and tried to get it to work but we decided to scrap that idea. I still took photos to document what we did because it was the original plan.
We tried moving the projector closer and closer to the model but we just couldnt get the words to print in the right place, to improve on this I think we would of needed a stronger projector with strong lights and maybe the words printed with a black out ink so no light would of been able to pass through the text.
The images on the right are demonstrating how we got the back ground the colour it is. After trying multipul times with the projector to get the text printed, that didn't work so we challenged ourselves to see what else we could do with the materials we had. We managed to put the coloured plastic sheets to use. We placed them over the lights and they lit the room up red. We clipped the coloured sheet in, we tried doing it with different colours but the red one is the only one that stood out and made a difference. As we also kept the projector in use by putting a orange sheet on that it made the two colours blend with each other for the back ground which I thought was really cool. I really like how the back ground turned out for this shoot and my team and I managed to get some good images for this. We want to take the editing a little further for this shoot so we are going to edit some words on the model as the idea we had didn't go to plan.
