FMP- week 4

I started off my fourth week by visiting a gallery, and the gallery I decided to visit 'Never mind the sex pistols' by an artist named 'Pierre Benain'. I really was inspired by Benain's work and I really like the way he shot and the style of his photos, I came across the gallery on an educational visit and i really enjoyed it so I went back for a second time. I got a feel of escapism from his photos and this is why I am including him as research in my project, as there is a old fashioned feeling to his photos and the way the people in his photos look like they have been out all night and they have beers and cigarettes and the room they are in is dirty and there is things everywhere. The photos are of John Lydon who was in a band named 'There sex pistols' and 'Paul Benain' shot photos him. I could really relate to these photos as some of my nights out after skating have looked like the photos he took, so i thought I could get some great photos to respond to his work.

I then started to plan a response to 'Benain's' work so I started to go out an shoot on a 35mm film camera to get the same effect as 'Benain's' pictures so I took a camera to a party that everyone was going to after the skatepark so I could incorporate the theme of my project into the same style as 'Benain'. I took a lot of different photos and tried to capture the same essence as Benain did, for example I took most of the photos when the party had finished and the last men standing were all together. I felt like this was the best way to capture the same style as Benain did, I even captured a photo of one man sleeping which I used as one of the responses as it reminded me of Benain's work I also had one photo of a man smoking and then another of a man drinking at early of the morning. I feel like this is a good representation of escapism and freedom as its photos of youth doing what they enjoy on the weekends when there not at school or work or anything of that sort, below are two of the photos I took responding to Benain's work. As I said I took them on a disposable camera that I took to   a party that was taking place after a skating competition so I feel like I have stayed in context of my project.



After looking at Benain's work I started to focus on restrictions to contrast with escapism which I was thinking would be a good idea to show in my final set of photos. For a first look on restrictions I decided to focus on myself as I had suffered a severe arm brake and it was preventing me from skating and therefore I thought it was the perfect example to display as restriction as I had been put in a cast and I thought the cast represented a restriction perfectly. Below is a photo of my arm in a cast.

After looking at restrictions I decided to research artists who focused on restrictions and I wanted to show in my work restrictions as well as escapism to show the contrast between the two whatever the restriction or method of escapism may be. After searching and looking at different artists I came across an artist named 'Jeffrey Cervantes' who did a set of photos of a man with wire wrapped around his face and obviously the wire representing the restriction of the man but the question I asked myself was what they were restricting him from?
I wanted to respond to Cervantes work but I wasn't sure how to, however I went down to the skatepark and began to shoot, I was shooting on a 35mm camera so I didn't no what results i was getting but when the photos came out I immediately had a photo which I thought represented Cervantes photo very well, as you can see from below it is a photo of a boy smoking a joint blowing smoke with his middle finger up however he is also behind the bars of the ramp and I thought the bars represent the restriction very well and the bars almost represent life which he is rebelling by showing his middle finger and smoking a joint.

I then edited the photo in photoshop to get the same effect as Cervantes did with his photos, so I added a brown tint effect on the colour to recreate his work as you can see below.