PAGE TURNERS (SECOND YEAR EXHIBITION

Second-year book exhibition at Queens gate market Huddersfield my second-year final project was on display for the public along with other talented photographers from my university.

My photo book 'Caucasian Male' based on recalled memories from when I was a child living with my mother who was in a domestic violent relationship. I have used the absence of the male character and the home we lived in to help the narrative using archives image. Repeated use of a disturbing image of my mother in different crops throughout the book sequence alongside a statement I often herd.

'Caucasian male 5ft 8, bald wearing a checked shirt, white trainers and blue jeans heading away from 53 Benton street.'

Temporary Contemporary exhibition space

The use of the broken sentence and broken image reinforces a broken home but also the physical effects of violence. The book is bound with beige thread in a pamphlet stitch by myself I wanted to bound the book my self with a stick to also reinforce my self and the fact these events happened in my home.

How I got to the final book?

After many sequences and more shoots and extensive looking through my archived image I finally decided on the sequence of the book and just needed to finalise the stock and binding but how did I start?

I began by visiting my old home where I lived with the male character, my mother, older brother and for a short while my little sister. I just wondered around the streets it was extremely overwhelming, even though I am 14 years older now and he doesn't live their another family moved in after we sold the house I felt extremely venerable and young like I was back in time. I used the camera to capture specific things that stood out from my memory such as the snickers and ally ways that were next to every 4th house. The shop was we would spend our weekend playing and my mum and her partner would drink with the neighbours.

I then came home and looked through the images I had shot to which ones matched my memory the most and linked them with the archived images I had. I wanted to show the viewer that the male character in the book was also a family man and we looked like a happy family and sometimes we were but he also had the opposite side to him and was violent. Showing our happy family photo again the bruised image of my mum caused confusion through the book for the viewer witch Is also how I felt when he switched from nice John to angry John. creating this book from my younger mind and recreating it not from an adults memory but a child was very important to me.

After I had shot everything that was significant I sat down and began playing with the sequence and quotes I remember distinctly hearing.I then resulted in my final outcome and I am extremely happy with it.

The exhibition itself could have been better if the student and university had more time to prepare and we could have had prints on the wall and the book below with information about the narrative of the book around the whole exhibition space not just a small table however it is all a learning curve and it was just nice to be apart of the university's new exhibition space.