A photo a day – surreal workflows

I had originally envisaged today’s photo to be surreal and graphic like this below. My aim was to use something – anything – that I use to manage my impairment and include it in a wholly unrelated context to see what it evoked. In the end I used rolled up leg bag straps taped to my glasses.

But as I experimented – with different backgrounds and approaches – the original idea developed in a way in a way I don’t think it would have by just thinking about it. There is something in undertaking the activity that is developmental and enhances the eventual outcome. So, when reviewing the shots taken, some of those I had not originally envisaged working particularly well confounded my expectations. For example, five shots shown below five shots stood out.These five worked better than the rest and while I was pleased with the graphic, originally envisaged approach, it was the last shot that I really liked – and I didn’t mean to take it!

So this below is my photo of the day. It came about as I did not wait for my flash to recharge and fired off another shot. Thus instead of shooting at 1/60th the image took 4 seconds and captured my movement. This seemed to add to the photo’s surrealism in a way I had not envisaged.

Because the image is a head shot and makes a play on the eyes it put me in mind of Man Ray (link), although I think he would have selected the more graphic representation I began with. The other person it put me in mind of for totally different reasons is Jo Spence and her photo that makes a political point about Freud – see it here: (link).

I don’t think the experiment was totally successful and the nature of the items I used to reference impairment are not wholly obvious, but the activity was interesting nonetheless.

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