I’ve been working on a project that is aimed at speaking about the time when things are redundant and used up. Maybe this is because I am on the last lap of the MA – who knows. I liked the idea because it speaks to both equipment and also disabled people. Some view disabled people as redundant and useless just as much as a broken car maybe useless.
So I collected different pieces of used kit and then began experimenting. The first thing I realised was that unless the viewer understood what the kit was they might not recognise it as used up. I thought about this and decided to indicate this by making the stuff visibly damaged/used.
I got a blow torch (not a clever thing to use when you are paralysed and can’t feel if you are burning parts of your legs) and a tin and began melting items together. Then I shot some images of the kit while compressed in the tin.
The resulting images were okay (ish) but this was meant to be a physical project rather than one where the end product was a photo and so I then took the items out of the tin and left them for a while. The results wasn’t great as you can see here with the kit shot against a simple black background.
Thoughts
While I like some of the images I am unsure about the actual physical objects created. I am uneasy about them and the only reason I can think of is that they have not involved much craft. The images on the other hand have required craft. That is, I have had to think about framing, lighting, emphasis etc. but this is less so for the physical artefact. That is rubbish.
