Pondering over Assignment Two

I find myself quite excited for this assignment and I look forward to executing it with as much enthusiasm. All three categories are exciting to explore, but two of them are out for me for the reasons, that Views I can’t do justice with the current scenario – our government has no clue how to handle this at all. When we had a hundred cases, the entire country went under a severe lockdown. Now that today we have surpassed China in the total death toll, we are in an eased down lockdown. As soon as they announced this “eased-down lockdown 4.0” on 17th May, we have started to see the biggest spike of cases daily. Everyday since then we have seen a number of fresh cases recorded higher than the day before. The borders are sealed again from today as each state blames the other one for bringing in fresh cases. So we are much worse off than what we started with. So going out to explore views is out of question and knowing the unstable minds of our government, it is best not to take any chances as of now.

I had narrowed down to more than 50 people who’s Heads I wanted to collect but failing to come up with any idea what to do with the rest of their bodies, along with confusion over the method of choice on how to cut them – between an electric saw or butcher’s knife – made me decide not to go ahead with it.

Collecting Things now has been playing on my mind for a long time. Despite my trying to deviate and think about the other categories, my mind keeps coming back to it. So that is what I am going ahead with. Currently researching a lot, my mind is overwhelmed with ideas and I need to narrow down to what I want to do with my final presentation. As the initial ideas of collecting things, this is what I am thinking:

• A collection of expensive and rare whiskies that I have collected over two decades (No I am not an alcoholic – and I don’t even drink Whiskey). The collection now has some 40-50 odd bottles and for ever I have wanted to document these to make a coffee table book out of it, before it gets replaced by water over the years as the younger generation grows up.
• A collection of exquisite Lord Ganesha Idols, that I collect one of every Diwali, (the Indian Christmas), a festival of lights that is celebrated with great fanfare in our country. These idols are visually beautiful and have creative ways of depicting the Lord.
• A collection of crystal candle/votive holders as I am a collector of them. These again are beautiful hand crafted pieces from across the world and are hand blown glass pieces in beautiful and fluid shapes.
• Lastly, the one that I am most leaning towards, as that is of the most value to me, are little things that I have found or kept over the years as a memory. These are not bought things as the above but found or collected things that I have cherished. I don’t want to give away the description of those things as I feel that it will take away from my final presentation, but as they hold a lot of sentimental value for me, and I have never ever thought of documenting them, I think it will be great idea to go with it.

I am a collector of things since childhood. I used to collect empty match boxes when I was a kid and hide them in layers under my mattress. My mum found them one day and she was livid. When I came back from school it was all thrown in the garbage. It went on to stamps, then coins and so on. Some of my weird collections at the moment are my equipment boxes (camera, lenses, accessories) and I have a store full of them. I also collect beautiful packaging boxes. Oh my god!! I am going to turn into a weird old woman who was found buried under her pile of empty boxes.

As a collection of things, I have, over the years collected a lot of stuff, some of it is trash and some of it a treasure, very close to my heart. It is these treasured things that have very special memories attached to them that I want to rediscover through this assignment. I have some ideas and thoughts on what I want to do as a concept that will bind these things together- they are very sketchy in my head and I am going to complete my research before I narrow them down. Between the two choices of sharp depth of field and a shallow one, my concepts are varying as of now – but there is a leaning towards going with the shallow depth of field concept. The few ideas that I want to play with for my final concept include:

• Textures and impressions
• Play of natural light as aperture priority mode is the key during this part of the coursework so that rules out using artificial light for me.
• Vantage Point
• Colour or B&W is still not clear in my head.

I think these are just a lot of rough ideas that I need to carefully deliberate over while am researching. I simply thought I will pen down some thoughts before I forget them completely. I have been asked by my tutor to research Anna Fox for this assignment, which I am along with all the other photographers. Hopefully, things will clear out some more in the coming few days and more specific realisation shall dawn upon me. Till then, Cheers and wish me luck.