Sneaky Peak

These are a few examples of the images that I took whilst in The Gambia. I need to go through them all and edit down which can be used and which can't, then decide the outcome I want to produce and then begin working to make that happen.

©Sarah Neuenhaus

©Sarah Neuenhaus

©Sarah Neuenhaus

©Sarah Neuenhaus

Return from The Gambia

I returned this week from my trip to The Gambia. It was amazing !! I feel renewed and my energy levels are refreshed, and I feel excited to finish my degree and do these projects.

I took almost 800 images during my trip, most of these are for my university projects. I hoped to have many more images but it is so difficult, when you are around the children they want to hold your hand and give you hugs and they want your attention. So it is increasingly difficult to turn your back on that, or say no to holding a child's hand to take a photograph of them instead. I tried to do both, hold their hand to start with and stop let go and photograph them and the area around. However, this means you do lose some shooting time.

I think in order to be able to shoot the whole time, you need to separate yourself from any group or bond with the Gambian people. The whole reason I went there was to be with the families and children and give them hope, the university work happened on top of that, so thats where my compromise came in.

Saying that, I am very very excited to start working with the images I did take. I have had a quick look through them and I just feel so excited. This is good, because hopefully it means I will really push myself to do well, because I put so much effort into getting the images, I don't want to let myself or the children/people in the photographs down. I have a responsibility now to represent them and show them correctly through my work.

Daydream realization

Whilst doing a bit of daydream thinking about this work, it struck me that the art & craft work I collected from the children in The Gambia is from very young children, and whilst I was with them creating it, they were just so excited to be doing this sort of thing, they didn't care what it looked like. It was a true expression of their creativity and not their thought processing creativity. They just wanted to make a picture, not construct it through what their mind wanted to create. 

I think thats the approach i need to take with this work too. I need to stop thinking about it so much. Make a true representation of my journey in The Gambia and how it turns out will not be through me sitting for hours trying to make colour to colour and fit the text in perfectly. 

The Gambians, make their own clothes, jewellery, they cook outside on the sand path. They are not overly worried about how they look, are their clothes, jewellery and hair co-ordinated. 

So I am going to stitch into my work, use beads and shells and whatever things I can find around me. Just like they do !

Caroline Dyal

http://www.carolinedyal.com/About-Caroline-Dyal

I came across Dyal's 'Rio Collage Diary' which is exactly what it says. A diary made from collage of Rio.. it is a much simpler looking callage diary compared to Eldon's work, it has more of a scrapbook feeling I think.

But it does document a journey and it tells a story. A story told with mainly images and documentation rather than text.
I really like that you can tell it is handmade. It gives the viewer more of an attachment and interest in it .. if it was printed and digitally created I feel that it would lose a lot of what it has to offer.

Dan Eldon

http://www.daneldon.org/adventurer/the-journals/

Looking at Dan Eldons work i feel quite inspired. It looks like collage and it looks very personal to his journey. It is really cleverly a mix of text, image and drawing.

I think my work could be similar to this.. I have already made the images, am in the process of gathering text and whilst in The Gambia I collected some of the art and craft work that the children had created. So all of these things can be incorporated in a similar way to this work.

small ideas

I know that i want to create something with my hands…. I am thinking of a book/diary. I don't want to make it on a computer and send it to print.
The content of what I produce will include and maybe be about my experiences in The Gambia. Where they make everything by hand because computers, machinery etc etc is not readily available and the majority of the country is very poor so they can't afford to do anything but make and sell with their own hands.

So - I am going to research some diaries and see where it leads me

What to do..

My mixed media project has taken a bit of a back seat up until now as I have been getting my head around my dissertation and major practical project work.

I have just returned from my trip to The Gambia, and I have gained a lot of images, as well as some written pieces from the people I travelled with and a few craft things made by the children.
I want to create a book or a diary of some sort with all the things I have but I am really struggling to get my head around it.
It's hard enough when coming back from another country to reign yourself back in, but when deadlines are looming and you know you have so much to do, reigning your brain in it so difficult and I am severely struggling !