They F*ck You Up

This series of digital images is a deeply introspective exploration into the widely publicised effects of our upbringing on our adult behaviours. I am also representing elements of our society, or at least my opinion of our society, in an attempt to decode the subconscious assumptions I have placed upon my surroundings based on events from my past. The final result should demonstrate the fragile intersection between my current social, political and philosophical ideals and the fragments of memory from my earliest years.

I am using the medium of still photography to construct visual dialogues that communicate to the viewer my own perceptions. In doing so, I hope that the viewer is able to reciprocate and unknowingly divulge some of their own beliefs during their experience with the work.

With this project, I am further examining this interactive relationship between image and viewer using stylised, visual metaphors. This allows for the communication of my own set of ideals whilst enabling each piece to retain a mysterious and ambivalent void in their meaning which I intend to be completed by the viewer.

I have drawn inspiration from a multitude of sources, including contemporary conceptual photographers, sculptors, multimedia artists and a number of important pioneering conceptual artists such a Marcel Duchamp and Bruce Nauman. Alongside this artistic theoretical research, I studied a number of journals, articles and books regarding cultural identity in modern western civilisation as well as a number of key texts from Hegel, Marx and Althusser regarding their own theories on social utopia and dystopia.

The work is not simply a visual representation of generic emotions and angst, but the physical manifestation of the personal and emotional journey that I have undertaken over the course of the last year. Therefore, as each image is constructed, a new piece of my life is not only exposed to the viewer, but also presented to myself.