On reviewing my work I can see that as I have progressed through this project I have become less sure that the red and black colour values are what I want to use. These are angry colours and I am torn between those and a more cool evocation. I am not angry at my lot; rather I am resigned to it. Thus I make the best of my life but feel distant from the person I was pre injury and those who do not know what it is to be ill or disabled. Therefore I think a different, less angry colour is needed or a different approach. I created a blue image first because of the association of the colour with feeling low.
Maybe the blue is too rich because the evocation I was after did not materialise. So I created a set using different colour combinations. It is interesting to see the different colour values side by side.
The yellow and blue is too high key and happy, the red too angry and the blue a little boring so as I continued to work with the images another wholly different approach came to mind that would help evoke the sense of anomie and distance I am after. Here it is.
This photo almost works for me: it evokes the sense of dislocation and distance I feel from the rest of society and does it by reference to my impairment and hinting at the stuff that I have to deal with. The approach references this is a similar way to Paul Graham’s American Night photographs. In these works, Graham explores an unspoken but omnipresent social divide that exists in contemporary America. But I have also used a small scale to draw people in, in a way that is similar to Judy Fiskin’s American Dingbat series. I think that by using both techniques the sense of distance and dislocation between me and society is effectively represented and evoked.
I am not sure whether the project is finished yet or not. I think I will sleep on that decision.
anomiepete 