Hannah Wilke

Wilke ia known for her photographic work of performances in which she used her own body and she established herself as both the artist and the subject of her work. Wilke coined the term "Performalist Self-Portrait" to describe photographic work she created.
Hannah Wilke died in 1993 from Lymphoma. Her last work, Inra-Venus is a posthumously published photographic record of her physical transformation and deterioration resulting from chemotherapy and bone marrow transplant. The photographs which were taken by her husband confront the viewer with personal images of Wilke progressing from midlife happiness to bald, damaged and resigned.

This piece of work links in with my theme of Identity as it is showing how her body is slowly giving in to the cancer and her identity fading.

Tattoos and Identity

"Were living in this world that's so fragmented and so chaotic that we're more able now than ever before to 'recreate identities very easily,' both online and in real life." - Anne Velliquette (Professor)


In 1998, Velliquette and colleagues conducted an interview- based study that found people use tattoos as a way to cement aspects of their current selves.
"We were hoping to look at the postmodern identity, and really what we found is that we were in this modern era where people didn't know who they were." Eight years later the team revisited the idea. The second study, like the first, found that people used tattoos as a means to express their past and present selves. But the people in the second group also seemed to need proof that their identities existed at all. They relied on tattoos as a way to establish some understanding of who they actually were. (The Atlantic Newsletter)

I think this article is really interesting as tattoos are not only seen as being 'cool' and 'fashionable' nowadays but they are also ways for people to express themselves via their body. I think it would be fun to ask people what their tattoos mean and why they got them as it can give an insight into the sort of person they are without really knowing them properly. I could also then take photographs of them with their tattoos hidden and exposed to show the different side to the person that it shows.

Sarah Deragon - The Identity Project

Deragon is based in San Fransisco and is predominantly a portrait photographer.

The Identity Project was her first personal project and it launched in January 2014. 

This photography project seeks to explore the labels we choose to identify with when defining our gender and sexuality

These images were taken in New York and are all accompanied by text giving the viewer a small insight into how they view themselves. 

Testing with the projector

Contact sheets

Test shoot

I wanted to use different types of backgrounds to see what effect they all gave. All the locations were places I had been and shot myself therefore making them personal to me. I thought that putting them over the model would create a fun effect making her immersed in the photograph, I thought this could represent a moment in time re living the memory. I decided to use text with my image last minute but I'm glad I did try it as I think its a really good way to put a message across and I could incorporate text into many different ideas.

I then used an old photo I had took of the model and placed it behind her to show two different sides to her and to represent that people have many faces.

Freya Dumasia

Freya was an A level student who chose to do her final project on her identity, Her work depicts a young Islamic woman wearing a burqa and explores issues related to culture and identity.
   

Though I personally can't relate to her work it gives a strong indication of how 'overlooked' she feels by society and something that I think is very relevant at the moment.

Identity.

In psychology, sociology, and anthropology, identity is a person's conception and expression of their own and others' individuality or group affiliation.

I have chosen to do the theme 'identity' within my project as I think it is a broad subject but one that everyone can relate to, whether its their own identity or a similar struggle with their identity. 
I also think it gives a lot of room for experimenting to find out the best creative way to put this idea across, I wanted to use this idea within the surrealist movement as I think that when it comes to figuring out who you are what you want to do and where you want to be your mind is often a jumbled confused mess and using surrealism and an abstract technique can help put this across in my images.

Experiments