My love for photography began when I first picked up a camera at nine years old. Since that first photograph I have been using this medium to create a visual diary of my world. I started by taking photographs of my friends and family. This developed into a more detailed visual record of my life and the world I lived in as I grew older. At university I began creating visual diaries which involved photographs as well as text and various mementoes such as ticket stubs, beer mats, notes etc. The idea of photography embedded with text has always interested me. Through my art work, my personal visual diaries and my work as a Media and Film studies practitioner I have been drawn back time and time again to photographs and narratives.
Books have always been important to me. I read a lot of books for my job and for fun. Although I enjoy a variety of genres I particularly enjoy reading novels that explore popular culture and relationships. I like to read about youth culture and sub cultures. From F Scott Fitzgerald who captured the zeitgeist of the Jazz age and the bright young things to Douglas Coupland who spoke for Generation X. I enjoy the mindless narcisstic hedonism of Brett Easton Ellis' early work - Less than Zero and Rules of Attraction and the cruel gritty realism of Irvine Welsh. Although Margaret Atwood, Joyce Carol Oats, Tama Janowitz and Angela Carter have offered a feminist perspective of women in the last thirty years I feel that there are very few women writers exploring popular culture in the same way as Coupland, Ellis and Welsh. Are there contemporary women writers exploring subcultures and popular culture?
My fascination with media and film texts led me to study journalism film and broadcasting at university. I was mainly interested in modules that explored photography and film that addressed social trends, issues and problems.
The first time I looked at Nan Goldin’s and Corinne Day’s work made me realise my interest in people and in particular subcultures. Her work made sense to me. I understood that the narrative running through her work deals with some of the issues that I want to explore - dancing, flirting, friendship and music. In a similar way to Day and Goldin a very big source of inspiration for me is music. I think underground parties as a subculture is an important and complex social experience that merits further investigation. Photographing subcultures throws new light upon the way in which our lives are constructed, experienced and lived as we head further into the twenty–first century. Goldin’s ballad examines dancing, music, sex, dressing–up and drugs and how each of these aspects feeds into and creates the unique social group, which makes them radically different from other more socially accepted groups.
Underground parties are a profoundly visceral and corporeal phenomenon, it is a leisure activity that allows individuals to shake off their everyday world identity and subsequently recreate their experience of the world. Like Day and Goldin, the tribe or family I am interested also live their lives at the edge of society. My interest in capturing people and the lives they lead has developed as my expertise and knowledge of photography as a medium has grown. This has in part been because of my use of my Canon Rebel EOS and the various compact digital cameras over the years. My interest and understanding of Photography through Foto gallery courses introduced me to a more theoretical understanding of the medium. The courses allowed me to begin to question photographic images and their ambiguous but potent force in the modern consciousness and to consider whether photography is an art or a tool.
To conclude, my journey through my study has ultimately confirmed to me, that photography is a way to explore the world and myself.
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