Some of the weird stuff I found on WISH and other sites

After the tutorial, I went on a mission to find some of the weird things that you could buy with cameras in them, I have to say I was quite shocked and it definitely has not helped with the paranoia feelings….

I was quite shocked at what you could find online, I believe the most shocking items for me were the Air Freshner, as you see these types of air fresheners everywhere and it looks no different, and the coffee cup as, to me, this feel like the last place I would expect a camera to be hidden, and you could have a coffee cup anywhere with you, in the bedroom, outside, in an interview, anywhere!

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Why?

Some of the adverts seem to have ulterior motive to them, especially this advert which has an image of a half naked girl, but why? If the camera is hidden, it’s almost like they are applying it is used to take images of people without them knowing about it!

I am aware that this is a chinese website and that the regulations and what not may be different, but ethically this seems very wrong to me. However, this app is very well known in the UK so anyone could buy this.

Tutorial sessions

After a lot of re-thinking, trying to re-model my project as I was so worried about people not liking it, I have decided to stick with my original idea of ‘Surveillance’ as I realised the main reason I wanted to change was because I was paranoid that people would not like it and would think it was boring, however I realised that I need to think for myself and not worry about what others think. So this is lesson number 1 for year 3!!!

Having our first tutorial really helped me to talk through my idea and get a good perspective, it also helped me feel a lot more positive about it. Jon gave me a lot of great people to look at including Stacey Dooley and her work around the Molka (spy camera) issues they have in Korea, Stephen Gill and his work with the wildlife cameras and Kate Peters who has a sort of a voyeurism aesthetic to her work.

I now have a much clearer view of what I would like to get out of this project, and after a fair amount of discussion, I am very interested in all of the weird stuff people hide cameras into. I have sketched a couple of first hand ideas that I had from this tutorial which are shown below.

I had this idea of creating a sort of catalogue of the items with an image of what that item has take next to it, as looking through this web pages where they are selling this sort of material made me feel very uneasy as these people are selling these cameras not necessarily knowing what they may be used for.

Re-thinking

I have thought a lot about my project proposal and how it is based on ‘The feeling of being watched’ but I am having difficulty connecting with this idea as a single idea. I believe that I took the wrong approach with this and almost took photographs as the person watching even though there is no person, it is in our minds and so I feel I need to rethink this idea and make it more realistic and relatable.

 As this is a symptom and side of my anxiety and a lot of people I know with anxiety, that it could be interesting to work with other anxiety symptoms such as disassociation, paranoia, over-eating/under eating, OCD, etc…

 I have been looking at Joe Spence and how she uses photo therapy and puts herself in the camera and I really like how she frames and portrays her difficulties with her Breast Cancer.

 When creating these images, I would like for people who also suffer with these symptoms to be able to relate to them and almost understand that they are not alone in feeling this way, there are many others and we need to be there for each other.

Experimental Shoot 1

I am not too sure how I want to start this project, but this was an idea I had where I took some pictures of my sister in her bedroom looking from outside, I really dislike this shoot as it made me feel quite uneasy taking the images even though she knew I was photographing her. This was just an experiment to see where I could possibly go with this idea, but I am starting to questions this idea and I am still not too sure if I would like to carry on with it.

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Proposal & Mood Board

I have begun this academic year with a lot of questions and thoughts about my life. I realise how far I have come through these last 2 years at University and notice that I am starting to understand who I really am as a person. I would like to use this year as a form of ‘Photo Therapy’ and as a way of getting to know myself and learning how to express myself through Photography. I would like to learn how to explain the way I feel and how certain events in my past have affected my life now. 

I have always struggled to understand and believe certain things that go on around me, I find it difficult creating relationships with people as I have a very unstable way of thinking and therefore cannot fully trust anyone. I often believe that there is no way I have had a boyfriend for this long and that he must be some sort of ‘Russian Spy’, which to a lot of people sounds silly, but to me, I consider this being a possibility a little too often. 

I would like to use this year to find a form of communication of not necessarily big things that affect me in life but also small things. I am thinking I would like to start the year by using the idea of ‘Being Watched/ Surveillance’. I remember watching the Truman Show a number of years ago when I was still quite young, and I have always felt a sort of odd connection to it, in the way that I always feel people are watching me or that everything around me has been planned, I realise that I have mentioned the film almost every time I have had to explain this feeling to a new counsellor or similar. I watched it again recently to get some ideas, and I really do like the idea of creating a project based on this thought, based on not only being watched but also conspiracy theories in the idea that everything does happen for a reason and that the world is not really what we think it is. I wouldn’t necessarily call myself a conspiracy theorist, however I do, and have for a long time, tried to think about stories that others would find silly, to almost make sense of my life and I feel as if I do it to create hope for myself that maybe there is something that has been planned for me and that going through all the crap my siblings and I went through as kids is just a way of preparing us for that thing. 

I have found a lot of inspiration from a number of films and some books ( The Island, 1984, The Hunger Games, etc) and so I feel I would like to make this in a sort of fictional setting and possibly have a cinematic outcome, as whenever I tell anyone about my past, they do end up telling me that it sounds like something they would read in a book… 

Aesthetically, I am thinking along the lines of distorted views and looking through CCTV cameras as well as looking into the possibility that we can be watched through everything day things such as our phones, computers, webcams, microphones, but also maybe, as crazy as it sounds, plants and wildlife which has been in a lot of conspiracy theories before. 

I am not too sure yet how I would like to form the imagery of this project, but I am forming new ideas and visuals everyday so I do believe that there is a lot to think about and do with it, my only worry is that it can become a bit too much of a big project, so I will try my best to keep it as narrow as possible. 

I created a mood board to give myself a visual of what I would like to get, aesthetically, out of this project.

I created a mood board to give myself a visual of what I would like to get, aesthetically, out of this project.