Finding a title..

So it has recently dawned on me that I need a title for this body of work!

Argh! I have no idea what to title it - how do you come up with a title?

Oh my gosh I need to really think about this.. maybe a brain storming session is needed.

Budgeting/Costing

When it came close to the time of needing to print I set myself a budget of £200 as this is how much bursary I get this term, and so that is the money that I set aside specifically for my work. However, out of this I also need to get my stuff for Mixed Media and for the exhibition. I really am hoping that I can stay inside of this budget but if not I have a small amount of maintenance grant that I can dip into.

I have 10 prints which I am printing A2 - £7.50 x 10 = £75

I also need a presentation box to hand the prints in for submission, this needs to be professional and neat so that it protects my images but also does them justice (not just a cardboard box) I care about my work and this needs to be evident on submission.
This is coming from Pullingers online and costs £23.69

So far in total I have spent £98.69

I am not going to frame my work for submission because to be honest, I just can't afford to. I know that those prints will go into archive - for exhibition I will have to reprint and so those prints will be framed for exhibition. I would love to be able to frame them and have them absolutely perfect and as if they were going straight into exhibition, but unfortunately that is just not in my price range and so a sacrifice has to be made there in order for me to be able to afford the rest of the course.

Framing

Obviously, I want something that is not covered at the back because the point of this piece is to have light shining from behind it. I tried to find a photo frame that just had perspex or glass at the back of it so that it can still be completely see-through. Unfortunately, I didn't have much luck in finding something like this.

So I had the idea of displaying it in a box frame. But then the same issue stood that, at the back it will look a mess. I know its only the back and when it's on a light box nobody will see it, but I'm a perfectionist with these things and I just wanted it to look good all the way around, so that if people do hold it, it wont be a mess at the back.
Also, if the back is neat then all of the messy edges that are on the piece from the joining process will be hidden.

To resolve this and still have a neat back and front I decided to buy 2 frames and sandwich them together. So I took the backs off of both of them, and then super-glued the glass to the inside of the frame - at first I was going to take the glass out so that people could touch it and feel the material but then I realised that if many people did this it would become so ruined and the colours would change over time. So to preserve it I decided that I wanted to keep the glass in.
So that is super-glued into the inside of both of the frames. Then I glued the front piece of fabric to the back of the glass and the inside of the frame.
This was really difficult because it needed to be perfectly lined up but I had to have it all upside down to be able to glue it and keep it in place. So awkward and fiddly!

Then I had to keep that in place, glue the back of the fabric and the back frame piece and sandwich it all together.
The wood of the two frames didn't sit together as tightly as I wanted it to so I had to pile heavy books and things on the top of it for a couple of days to make sure that the super-glue dried whilst the wood was as tight together as possible, and not move it to allow the wood to pull away.



The chalk on the frames is really dusty so I had to also try not to get any of that off my hands onto the glass or front of the fabric, because once it was all glued there's no taking it apart to clean anything.

Final editing of the series

As I get closer to printing my final images, I don't feel totally comfortable with my final 10 but, I don't know why.

This is my 10 images:

I have 10 images because it is a well rounded number. Something inside of me just can't sit comfortable having an odd number of photographs. I'm not usually OCD about things but this I really totally am - so it must be my gut telling me that 10 is the right number.

The image top right - does it work? All the others are school age and in uniform, this is a mother and baby. I really like the image and it holds special memories in my heart, but taking emotion out of the equation .. does it fit. I don't think it does. So.... I need to replace it.

What if I add another image of a child not in uniform?
But then that's 11 images. It really doesn't sit comfortably with me. I can feel myself shifting around in my seat at the prospect of it.

Okay... so what about 12 images. Yep even number, it works i'm not shifting around so much at that thought. But... it still doesn't work for me visually! arghhhh - come on Sarah why doesn't this work.

The boy in the bottom left isn't looking at the camera. He's smiling and looks happy but he is not looking to camera. Which doesn't fit with the rest of the images because they all are looking to camera. So.. I don't want to use that image.

But then, again the issue with the top right image... so maybe I just take that one out of the series too. That also brings us back to 10 images.

However, the top left image - hes not smiling. My whole point is to show happy children and he doesn't look happy. He doesn't look sad or sick either, but hes not smiling.

I found these 2 images (top right, bottom left) which I had discarded previously. I am unsure why. I have cropped them slightly and edited them and I don't think they look out of place within the series. So.. I think I have found a way to make this work. Hurrah!

Although I think I now have 11 images again... okay i'll lay them out and consider for a day or so. Give it time to sink in and see what feels right.

THIS is my final series! Hurrah I got there eventually. I got rid of the photograph of 2 school girls together. It didn't fit quite right because there were 2 in the image and only 1 in each of the others.
All the photographs have 1 school child, all various ages, and they are each looking to camera. There is 1 boy who is not smiling (bottom 2nd from left) but his stare into camera is just so intense and striking that I can't not use it. I have had that image from the very beginning of editing and it is just so powerful to me I can't take it out.

I really wanted to have equal number of boys and girls, but I think that may just be taking OCD matters a little to far because I feel that it works well like this. There are 4 girls and 6 boys.. which is fine with me and I quite like it. The total number of images is an even number so I think that the number of boys to girls is off balance slightly.

Joining the layers

Now that I have all of my layers printed and together I need to work out how to join it all together.
The edges of the fabric keep fraying and the bits of cotton are going everywhere. I wanted to buy some shearing scissors to stop that happening, but stupid me went to the shop without my ID and they wanted ID for me to buy scissors! So annoying.
I found instead some anti-fraying glue that you can put on and it stops the edges from falling apart so I brought that instead. (They wanted ID for scissors but not glue!)

It has worked really well it dried really quickly so didn't go all over my work and literally just sealed the edges over and stopped all the little bits of cotton.
The acetate I have cropped slightly to make it the same size as the fabric. I almost made a massive error, I forgot that to stick it all together I would need a sort of seam allowance to put the glue or tape and I almost cut it all off. Then I remembered to leave it and so cut it further away from the edge of the image.
I am using double sided tape to join all of the acetate pieces together, it is strong enough to hold it and see-through so if any is seen when I have finished it won't be too noticeable.

I'm still not sure how I'm going to present it for hand in. I don't want to just give it in with all of the edges messy and it looking a mess. I need to figure out what I'm going to do for hand in.

Gathering names and ages

With the help of some of the teachers that I am still in contact with in The Gambia I have managed to find out all the names and ages of the children that I am printing portraits of.

I am so thankful for their help because without them searching villages and school classes for me, my project would not work the way that I have been wanting it to.

So, each photograph has a caption of the child's name and their age. This allows the viewer to connect with the child. Not to feel sorry for, or ignore the child because they are nameless to who is viewing the image, it is a portrait of a child, happy and smiling, who lives in The Gambia. I as the photographer have photographed them, documented that they are a person, in the same way I feel that somebody would document a friend in a portrait, or a celebrity.

I don't feel it fair to keep portraying African children as sick, malnourished, starving, sad and miserable people. The children that I met were happy, it happens that the images I am printing are all in school, but even the children outside of the school were happy, they live with what they have and they are all so thankful for what they do have. The don't know any different - until Westerners go in and start saying 'oh poor you' and 'oh how tragic' ... then they become aware that there is a difference! Who's place is it to say things like that to these people - nobodys! They are people! They should not be treated like they are lower than us, just because they don't have iphones and computers and gadgets that make our children so anti-social and brain square-eyed. They play in sand, they play with sticks and stone - so what?! So did the older generations of the Western world!

I am totally against them living in pig sty's, and totally for putting an end to diseases and malaria and everything else like that. They have the right to life just the same as everybody else - I am not disputing that at all! I just don't agree with the West being shown such ugly imagery of beautiful.. truly beautiful children!

Sizing inspiration

I have taken inspiration for my large prints from the work of Thomas Ruff.

He created and exhibited large scale portrait photographs in 1986-90 at the Saatchi Gallery. http://www.saatchigallery.com/aipe/thomas_ruff.htm

The scales of his images were 210x165cm and 200x150cm. His images were passport style, of just head and shoulders of people, so printed at this size they are larger than life size.
They would be attention grabbing and intriguing the the viewer, there is no way that they could be ignored.

This is how I want my images to be, not able to be ignored. However, I think that the sizing of Ruff's work is a little too big and if my images were printed that size it would be difficult to see the image as a whole.

'French theorist Roland Barthes, in his book Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography (1982), suggests that it is possible for a photograph to convey deep emotion, and that there is a moment when the subject of a photograph makes a direct link with the emotions of the viewer through the surface of the image.' http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-liverpool/exhibition/thomas-ruff/thomas-ruff-portraits

This quote also links to my work because I am hoping that the children in my photographs will make a direct link with the emotions of the viewer. I hope that they will speak through the image, and I am just acting as a facilitator to allow that link of emotions to happen. I feel that by using the children's name and age as the title for each image, this will strengthen the link because will know a little more information about that child.