ALEX J. COLES, CRIT SESSION 2 SUBMISSION

Since the last Crit session with Alex J. Coles I began focusing on my dad and I and our home we now share, after the feedback from fellow students and Alex Cole’s that the symbolic metaphor became lost in the typology display influenced by Bernd and Hilla Becher. The duos message and reassurance of the industrial architecture become extinct in the repetitive typology was a strong factor within their work. However, this display hindered the emotion of absence and presence I was trying to explore. I will not disregard the images as they could play a key role within the end product of a photo book when out comes to sequencing.

The storytelling aspect within my images consisting elements of the past and present relationship of me and my dad, using the camera to explore my memories of him before we met and to comment him now I live with him. Using my images to show a younger me is something I have done before recent project witch I enjoyed, I’m going to run with the idea of using photography to represent my memory and ideas of not knowing who my father was.

The images I presented during the Crit session shown in figure 1 and 2 are of my home witch I now share with my dad and a portrait of him taken through the living room window ,placing the camera outside.

Figure 1 shows a low angle portrait capturing the reflection of the garden in the frame. This low angle was picked up on by Alex as he noticed the lower angle showed my younger vision.

The window separating me and my father was a physical representation as I would often walk along his street past the house and see him through the window. The window being a barrier between him and the camera representing the break in our relationship. Taken from the happy accidence from the recent self-portraiture I presented in the last Crit session.

In fact the fist time I saw my dad in person was through this window, I wanted to document this experience as It was in fact seeing him through the window that eventually set me to finding out what he was like for my self.

Figure 2 is the house he and I now live, I would walk past as a child with many question about what the house was like? what was my old nursery like? and what was he like?

As he’s never moved house the home we once shared in the past then he lived alone to now living here together is something very important to this project. The distance in the photos also reinforces me getting closer to him over time.

Figure 1. Figure 2

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Figure List

Figure 1 Boothroyd , H. (2021). Dad Window. [photograph]. Creative studio-documentation , Huddersfield .

Figure 2 Boothroyd , H. (2021). home [photograph]. Creative studio-documentation , Huddersfield .