The Chain

Stuart Pilkington was kind enough to ask me to participate in his latest project "The Chain" which went live a couple of days ago (my contribution is above). I loved having an assignment--structure and deadlines are always a nice change of pace. Here's the gist of the project, from the website:

Stuart invited 107 photographers from around the globe to participate in the project at the beginning of 2011. And in February 2011 each photographer submitted a title/instruction to inspire a photograph by another person in the project. The photographers were connected like links in a chain. They were asked to respond to the title set by the person directly behind them. The title they set was directed to the photographer directly in front of them. For example, Elizabeth Gordon responded to the title set by Andrea Chu. Hiroshi Watanabe responded to the title set by Elizabeth Gordon. Harry Borden responded to the title set by Hiroshi Watanabe. And so on and so on.

My title was "The shadow of a doubt" (provided by Beth Dow) which I found very inspiring, and quite relevant as my newest series has some darker undercurrents, with things lurking below the surface and all that jazz. Today I was online researching poltergeists and their relationship to repressed adolescent emotion and got myself good and creeped out (it's not as pretentious as it potentially sounds--hopefully...). I have an idea of where it's all going and I'm in that stage where things that seemed only loosely related are starting to make sense as a whole.

As far as the title I assigned is concerned ("take a picture of something you hate"), I wish I hadn't been so literal--I think I literally took the assignment to come up with a title too literally. Har har. After reading all of the other titles I realize in retrospect that there was a real opportunity to be more experimental with it. All the more so since Colin Blakely was my assignee (is that a word?) and the titles for his own work are full of meaning; for example the image below--which I've always loved--is called "Recollection of the Battles Fought Maintaining the Home Front": 

   

 

© Colin Blakely

And above is the "thing he hates" which I think he should try christening with a title of his own making.


P.S. Stupid Blogger is making my formatting all wonky, apologies.