commemorate, memorialize, reminisce, hold dear, treasure, recollect, retrospect, revive, pilgrimage
Annie Liebovitz, Pilgrimage
Before her partner, Susan Sontag, died, she and Ms. Leibovitz had planned to do a book of places they cared about. They made all kinds of lists of where they wanted to go. Years later, Ms. Leibovitz realized that she still wanted to do that book, with her own list.
She took her camera to Virginia Woolf’s house, photographing the surface of her writing table, and into her garden, capturing the wide, roiling water of the River Ouse, in which Woolf drowned herself. She photographed Dr. Freud’s sumptuously carpeted patient’s couch in London, and Darwin’s odd specimen collection. Eleanor Roosevelt’s bedroom, with its simple white coverlets, in her cozy cottage, Val-Kill, stands in contrast to a silver serving dish, its rich patina rippling with light. Abraham Lincoln’s elegant top hat and the white kid gloves, stiff with age, he had in his pocket when he was shot, make a startling appearance. Ms. Leibovitz visited Louisa May Alcott’s house, and photographed the view from Emerson’s bedroom window. The photo Ms. Leibovitz took of Emily Dickinson’s only surviving dress hovers near the book’s opening pages like a beneficent spirit, a beautifully detailed, embroidered white ghost.
Pilgrimage (Wikipedia) A pilgrimage is a journey or search of moral or spiritual significance. Typically, it is a journey to a shrine or other location of importance to a person's beliefs and faith, although sometimes it can be a metaphorical journey into someone's own beliefs. Many religions attach spiritual importance to particular places: the place of birth or death of founders or saints, or to the place of their "calling" or spiritual awakening, or of their connection (visual or verbal) with the divine, to locations where miracles were performed or witnessed, or locations where a deity is said to live or be "housed," or any site that is seen to have special spiritual powers.
You will select 10 things of importance to you whether it be personal or historical. Select a word that will communicate the concept that holds your photos together: commemorate, memorialize, reminisce, hold dear, treasure, recollect, retrospect, revive, pilgrimage, (or another word that you choose...) You may select people, places, objects, events; in each photograph will consider composition, lighting and point of view. You will unify the 10 photos through size, color and how you choose to display them.
Use the Top 10 lists to brainstorm ideas. You may expand, redefine or modify the assignment if needed!
Written Statement:
What is the concept/word that holds together/unifies your photo series? (This will be the title of your work).
What personal meaning or significance do the photos have to you?
How are the photos visually unified? What holds the series together?
Select the 3 strongest images from your series and discuss: why does the photo (or do the photos) best illustrate your concept? what meaning does it (meanings do they) have? What is strong compositionally about the photos? (point of view, distance, line, shape, pattern, texture, repetition, positive and negative space....) Technically, what did you consider in the photo? (shutter speed, lighting, depth of field....)
CHALLENGE:
+Create a new photo series inspired by one particular photo (looking at concept, composition or technical manipulation of the camera) and shoot new photos thinking about that idea.
OR
+Create a new photo series inspired by your concept/theme OR a concept of one your your classmates.
Write a narrative explaining:
What is the concept or theme of your new photo series? What inspired your idea? How does your new series relate to your original photo series?
Photographer Research:
Look at the following sites and select a photographer who works in a style or subject matter similar to what you might want to create in the challenge photo series. On weebly, list the photographers name, post 3-5 images of their work and describe what you like about the photos compositionally, technically or conceptually.