LIVING IN PARALLELS
The times we are living have forced me to contemplate and reflect on my way of life and relationships. I find this current situation of living with Covid19 has had an impact on my notion of identity and place on differing levels and how I interact with my surroundings, people and even myself. The logistics of living in lockdown and having access to the supplies of essential household products, has also been an issue. These products have taken on a new meaning, no longer items overlooked or considered banal, but rather iconic. Their worth reinforced by the underlying concern of possible shortages and panic buying, as well as only being allowed out to visit supermarkets or chemists, which reiterates their importance. So it made sense for me to use these objects as the theme for my photographic project, expressing the way I currently relate to them.
I wanted to make pictures of ordinary, everyday objects found in the home in extraordinary circumstances, hoping to change the viewer’s perception of them, which is why Still Life was the right genre of photography to use.
Still Life portraiture meant I had a lot of control, allowing me to explore lighting, composition and colour. Yet it was challenging, because my framing and arrangement of objects would determine if they became the subject of beauty, interest or intrigue, so I had to pay meticulous attention to how I placed them in relation to each other, the lighting and what colours to bring together.
I had none of my photographic accessories due to lockdown, so I had to improvise, like working under poor lighting conditions, which meant working with a shallow depth of field. I introduced the reflection on the glass top to transmit a surreal feeling, a sense of living in two realities. I have portrayed the pictures in the order they were made, to demonstrate how my response to lockdown changed over the days. The same location together with the theme, would be the anchor linking them together, but the subtle changes in the actual setting meant it was not just a typology of household goods, but conveyed a sense of something being slightly out of sync, like the differing media information being supplied and thus lack of transparency, which felt disconcerting.
My intentions were to represent a notion of place, a place where I was at, but had never envisaged. On the surface, my identity was reflected in a collective way, by sharing a common experience and story, responding in similar ways to others, but on a more subtle level, it also conveyed how I felt emotionally. For the irony was, that in parallel to working on my project, my relationship fell apart and before I completed the final picture, my partner abandoned our home. So the sense of vulnerability I felt when stepping outside, was also experienced indoors.