This week Jon Levy has asked us to:
The task this week is to summarise a story proposal and provide 5 bullet point directions to start the story.
Please prepare 200 words as a summary and 5 key images that you hope to achieve to get the story started.
Please ALSO send me a handful of images of your own from recent projects/on going projects or favourite singles.
Here’s what i sent over:
‘does not suggest that death within 6 months is likely to occur’
The ongoing
Photo Documentary project focusing on my Father Lee Carroll. Over the past Year
i have realised that the Catalyst for this project was the recent Welfare Reform Bill which saw
my Father having to prove his disabilities. The first response of Photographs came as a reaction
to the Injustice we both felt while going through this ordeal. A year later, after my Fathers Appeal
has been denied and he is adjusting to life as a Job Seeker, i have come to realise that this
project is also about what put him in this position nearly 17 years ago. His Subarachnoid Brain
Haemorrhage. I have come to think about how his condition has always just been the Normal as i
was growing up. This has lead me to reflect on my whole family, how this event shaped us and
set the foundations for how my sister and i would be brought up. I feel the need to approach
other members of my family and develop a conversation. I also have felt the need to reach out
and contact Other Subarachnoid Haemorrhage survivors in an attempt to gain knowledge of their
experiences.
This Weekend just passed i Interviewed my Sister who has learning Difficulties, when asking her
i realised that she doesn’t really know what happened to our Dad, just that he has ‘half sight’ and
can’t drive anymore so can’t take us to places.
1. An Image of My Father and myself. a self portrait. Introduce myself into the Photograph. Even
if it is only one SIngle Image of myself in a set of 60 i feel i need to do this to continue and
overcome a boundary which i have yet to cross.
2. A Portrait of my Sister. In the house where she has grown up and always lived. It will have to
be previsualised
and constructed to communicate to the viewer that she struggles in her
Understanding of the world but she sees everything. She’s an Observer.
3. To tackle the issue of Photographing My Mother. She never gives the impression that she is
happy with her representation, she doesn’t seem to care about how she presents herself but i
know that her body image is one of the main things that gets her down. She works harder than
anyone i know into her own business which seems to be failing very slowly and thats at the
expense of her own personal up keep.
4. My Grandparents. A set of Images and an Interview with them would be beneficial to
Understand their perspective from the time when their Son, My Father had his SAH
5. A Meeting and a set of Images from another Subarachnoid Haemorrhage Survivor.
I also chose to send Jon the most recent Video and Photograph story i have produced which can be found here:
http://vimeo.com/55358024
Jon Levy’s Feedback:
The main point i got from Jon Levy today was to make sure that collaboration between myself and my Father in producing any new work is high on the agenda. He suggested that i should consider myself as the Director or Producer of the story and regard my Father as the Author.
He suggested that if i gave my Father the Option of what he wanted to do next, giving him the option to dictate the direction in which the project travels. He said that i should leave the involvment of other family members down to his decision. Let him make the choice of whether they should be included or whether he wants to find out about their experience of it.
Jon mentioned that it is Increasingly Important for me not to move away or leave the project but to realise my limitations with it. My limitations professionally. He suggests that the techniques i develop with this project and the way i produce work for this project can be used to work with other subjects and in other areas. I get the Impression that he is willing me to step away from my Father and Experiment with a different Subject. I think he wants me to prove my Photography and my ability as a Photographer so i am not just pidgeon holed under one project banner. He also mentioned he doesnt want me to have to test this story on how what impressions and how important it becomes to the viewers. It’s a hard one he says to keep selling as ‘this is important to me, so therefore it should be important to you’.
The Revised Bullet point!
The main point i think i now need to raise before i can revise my other bullet points is:
Asking my Father What he wants to talk about next. What he wants to do. What Photograph does he want to take next. Starting the process of Acting as co-Authors.
The Audio File of my session with Jon Levy can be found here: https://soundcloud.com/#seancarroll89-1/team2-1
Sean Carroll's Blog 