Of Longing And Memory

description

This project was designed to develop our understanding of visual language by creating a photographic series on a topic of our choosing and a sequence that captures the process of creating that series. For my series I decided to try to capture the emotional connections of longing, memory and nostalgia, associated with inanimate objects, in this case, a collection of Royal Doulton figurines that belonged to my grandmother. I had originally planned to photograph their faces in the style of traditional portraiture but, as I began working on the project, found that it was their body language that was much more expressive than their vacant porcelain faces. I shot them against a flat black background to emphasize the figurines and used natural lighting so that the shots could maintain a genuine element, as if they were being photographed on the shelf that they are displayed on, not in a studio under artificial lights.