I’ve been looking forward to this latest challenge, because I really like these photographic challenges that we do together, Shelly and I. They’re awesome because they allow me to see things in a different context, maybe even get me to try something new or simply get me to think and write about my photographic work. And its even more challenging to do them in conjunction with other creatives because it makes it possible to see another photographers point of view, get others thoughts and ideas about how to create photographic images.
This challenge was apparently simple, to make four pictures under these constrains:
Make a photograph of something that is supposed to be happy, and make it seem sad.
Make a photograph of something that is supposed to be sad , and make it seem beautiful.
Make a photograph of something that is normal and make it seem shocking
Make a photograph of something that you want the world to know about and make it urgent.
I started by waiting for the light, because I like to work in available light. But the light I wanted to work in never came so I ended up rigging a simple studio in the kitchen. I wanted all the images in this challenge to be done under the same light condition so they would be recognizable as a series.
The first image should depict something happy but that is sad. My idea was a simple picture with two scenes in it, but it was hard to get it to work. One reason is that as soon as you have more then three elements in an image, it has a way of getting messy. The theme is loneliness, and the picture depicts a trooper with teddy in focus with two troopers playing in the background.
happy-sad
The next challenge was to make a sad picture that is beautiful. When I read this challenge, I thought this part has my name written all over. I chose to make a picture about the fear of loosing what is dear to us, a child’s teddy.
sad – beautiful
The image of something normal that should be shocking was hard for me. I’m used to my visual world and I don’t experience it as shocking, but let a bounty hunter be dragging around on a teddy bear must in some context, be shocking. It isn’t for me, but maybe for the viewer.
normal – shocking
Soon I had come to the last challenge, the one that was supposed to be of something that I want the world to know about and that I find urgent. This was the most difficult one for me. I chose to come back to a theme that I think is one that we should talk about and that is every day violence, power and abuse.
I don’t know if you’ve ever thought about how many different types of weapons that there are in the toy world, but there are a lot. I see them everywhere: miniatures of real weapons or different types of imaginary weapons. I often wonder why this is the case? Perhaps the reason is that we need to demonstrate and depict the abuse and the violence that exists in our world. My picture is, in any case, about that.
urgent
These are the pictures that came out of the challenge:
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- urgent
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- sad – beautiful
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- normal – shocking
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- happy-sad
Now all I have to do is wait for Shelly to post her results on the blog – and I’m really looking forward to that
Kristina 🙂
normal – shocking
I would have loved to see your images first without your intent so I could have tried to experience your intent first, alone. They are all so well done and appropriate. I did experience them slightly different from how you have them listed though. I see your “urget” photo as something “normal made shocking”. (kids playing with toys and then one shoots the other). And I find Boba Fett to be “urgent”. (people need love and stability less they wander into a dark path). I love what you came up with and that they are a series.
Thank you! I’m so glad you liked them. And as I see it the interpretation is different from viewer to viewer 🙂 I like your as well.
Beautifully executed!