Blog Prompt #24

a) One way you could recreate the photos of Eleanor Antin would be to make a kind of diorama tableaux, using things like army men or plastic people. Like her series on Helen's Odyssey, the use of Barbies could be representative of an idealized representation of femininity. Placing objects that are normally small within a landscape could also be disorienting. I like the idea of creating opera scenes in real life as well.

I like the idea of the Arthur Tress fish tank sonata series as well. In fact, using fish tanks as background is interesting, because so many people like to recreate scenes on land underwater. Taking small glass containers, any number of "fish tanks" could be placed in various locations. The photos would have to be taken outside, in order to get the lighting right. The trick would be finding things small enough to put in the "fish tank"--of course, if the container appeared to be regular sized, the appearance of a giant penny or something else could be quite disorienting.

b) I haven't really thought too much about the final project yet (I'm still trying to get this most recent project underway) but I really like the idea of this constructed reality stuff. One of my favorite things to study is folklore, so I think it would be neat to create images that have an ancient, almost magical feel about them. Every culture has folklore, and every individual has a personal folklore, or at least, a unique, personal interpretation of their culture's. When I was a kid, my brother, cousins, and I made up an imaginary world in the forests surrounding their farm, and we played in this world almost every day. It was real to us. Now when we go back we like to reminisce about that time, and even like to come up with "what happened" to this land after we "left." I think it would be cool to go back and photograph this world, and through editing, return some of the magic to it. Another idea I've had in the back of my mind for some time now is to take portraits of my friends wearing tribal-esque costume created from their possessions--a way of constructing their identity through their surroundings, and the way material possessions can sometimes come to define us, or smother us. These are just ideas though.....