#1 – Film
I got a black and white roll of film developed the other day, but due to a malfunction with my camera’s shutter speed almost all the photos turned out extremely blurry and overexposed… soo this was definitely a bit of a sad moment, BUT I still thought some images looked kind of interesting, with a shadowy/ghostly look about them. I hadn’t planned on using these photos for the brief, but I thought perhaps they show labour in the way that all this effort had been put into buying the film, taking the photos, developing the film and scanning it, only to produce photos that aren’t really visible! This highlights the element of risk or fragility in labour which I find interesting. I sequenced the images in vertical rows in reference to rolls of film, which I also think is quite pleasing to look at. I would be keen to explore some ideas with film in this brief as I really like working with this more manual process. It would be cool to make an animation with it too! Or to alter the process in some way? I also think taking photographs on film could maybe have a closer connection to labour itself than using a digital camera.
#2 – Folding
This sequence focuses on the labour involved in care, as well as the idea of repetition. I took photos as I folded and re-stacked some clothes in my parents wardrobe, because I thought it would be just a nice thing to do. I think I’ve been quite unaware of the incredible amount of effort and labour my mum has put into doing my family’s washing throughout my life, and I feel I haven’t appreciated this enough. So it felt good to surprise her by doing just this very tiny thing! I organised the images of the stacked clothes in a stacked horizontal sequence, with the images almost merging into each other. This emphasises the structure of the grids in the wardrobe and the idea of repetition. It’s hard to tell where each image begins and ends, which kind of relates to the idea that washing is a continuous or never-ending labour in day-to-day life.
#3 – Planting
My final sequence explores gardening as a rewarding form of labour, but also a potentially risky labour too. We haven’t always had the best luck in our veggie garden, due to many things (-including snails and birds, to not enough light or water, or maybe because our dog likes to trample it and our cats like to poo in it). But aside from that, it has actually been doing pretty good lately! Anyway, I wanted to show in my images this idea of putting labour into something that may not have a certain or predictable outcome. I photographed myself planting basil from a tripod, however I think this ended up looking too much like a step-by-step planting tutorial. If I were to do something like this again I would try taking photos from different angles or distances to be more creative with it. I also think my hands look like the main focus in these images, but in a way this is quite interesting because it shows the movement of the hands as an important part in the labour.
