To help me get into the flow of creating visuals for this project I began by creating 50 postcards. It was useful in terms of seeing how my ideas look visually, and helped me figure out what materials I want to work with to best convey this project.
I made a questionnaire asking people what makes them feel like they belong? What makes them feel like they are at home? What makes them feel content? Below are some responses which I explored in my postcards:
Cuddling in bed
Animals
Sun on face in the living room with jazz on
A comfy bed
My favourite mug
Being with the people I love
Feeling at peace and being in a quiet (near silent) but comforting environment
When you can be completely naked while drinking coffee and still feel completely safe
My teddy
My soft lighting in my room makes each new room feel a bit more consistent
Zitra (her best friend & flatmate)
My bed
The seaside
Trees
Sex
Being able to be myself without any judgement or side eyes from people
People
A hug from a loved one
Being surrounded by people who actually care about you
A nice lil circle of friends
My plants
Writing in my diary
Smell of home - scent
Familiar faces
My cat
My blanket from home
Food from my own country
My own language
Having a familiar routine
Slippers
Baking
Being naked
I then went through my archive of photographs and started creating collages and layering images over one another. I started picking out certain photographs and placing them next to ones that had a similar colour, texture, tone, or atmosphere. I contemplated the core values of my work and the concepts behind this project. My intentions for this project is to highlight the difficulties of constantly moving from one place to another, trying to find a place to call your home, feeling comfortable in every home and new space you move into, and sharing the transitions of one place to another.
I asked myself questions such as:
What does home mean to me?
Does that differ to what someone else might view as home?
When I think of home, what does that entail?
What does it look and feel like?
Is it a space, an object, a person, a feeling, an action?
I created collages in the first postcards where I added typography to an image that either I or someone from the questionnaire thought of as comforting. Typography helped in terms of adding an extra element to help the viewer further convey this sense of feeling and emotion behind the object or space pictured:
There were many objects mentioned and I didn’t want to simply just take pictures of them, so I experimented by distorting some objects with a scanner. This allowed me to consider how the object would look when taken out of its place of comfort. The blurred and distorted view of the object was also a way for me to explore the feelings of uneasiness, discomfort, and unnerving senses:
On a few other postcards I created textile collages. On these I focused more on typography rather than imagery. By this point I’d realised that out of all the archive photography I was going through, none of the pictures were from the house I’ve been living in for the past 8 months, I had only really taken pictures of things in my previous flat that I lived in for 2 years. Therefore, because I had a lack of visuals in the new house I chose to work with type and the placement/arrangement of it. This was also my reasoning for the choice of words on the collages:
After looking at the postcards all together I started seeing which kind of images work best and which don’t. I also selected which of the images best convey the sense of feelings I’m focusing on and which images pair well together.
Keywords of my project I’m focusing on:
Light / shadow
Emotion
Distant
Separation
Aloofness
Transitions
Comfort / discomfort
