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| 'Photos', family album, 21.5 x 28 cm, ready-made. |
After the artist book I came up with in order to test the idea of Stream of consciousness (concept 2) it became clear that it was not the most suitable format for exploring an itinerary towards a state of being such as self-awareness. On that basis, I continued researching on how artists and designers communicate various states of being within visual culture. Inspired by Ed Ruscha's 26 Gasoline Stations, I came to the conclusion that an existential itinerary such as the one through which an individual acquires progressively the state of self-awareness, is about the acquisition of his or her's identity. And at the same time, if we assume that a person is embarking on a psychoanalytic process in order to gain a deeper understanding of the unconscious process that happen into our minds, they do that in order to understand themselves better and to acquire and/or accept who they are; hence their identity and hopefully live free.
Having said that, I came up with the idea to create a sequence that would symbolise the existential itinerary through which an individual becomes progressively aware of themselves. This sequence is composed -and it is being composed at the time being- by a family album and a year book. A family album is connected with the concept of family, home and protection whereas a yearbook is inextricably linked with that of graduation and, therefore, leaving home...
Since this project aims at communicating the concept of self-awareness to people by inviting them to experience a journey, I filled the album with (google) images that does not constitute a man's personal memories but with 'events' that people tend to connect their own memories with. In that respect, the imagery was selected out of 10 categories from the 1960s onwards: social and political events; sports; films; technology; cars; tourism; book titles; dancing and European advertising. For example, the 8-year-old Macaulay Culkin (Home Alone) himself, is nobody's personal memory. However, his portrait encapsulates some of the childhood memories that people have: a specific event of their childhood; the love and sensitivity of their family that they have 'attached' on that image -since human beings tend to do that while growing up in a fundamentally 'spectacular' epoch.
I invited people to take this potentially collective 'family' album and think about which one of these images they feel it is connected and/or it has contributed to who they are at the moment. The next step it is to choose the aforementioned image and get captures by holding the image and hence, reproducing to infinity a moment of awareness through an identity photograph, which will culminate into the synthesis of a yearbook.
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| 'Photos', family album, 21.5 x 28 cm, ready-made. 'Movies' spread. |
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| 'Photos', family album, 21.5 x 28 cm, ready-made. 'Technology' spread. |
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| 'Photos', family album, 21.5 x 28 cm, ready-made. 'Cars' spread. |
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| 'Photos', family album, 21.5 x 28 cm, ready-made. 'Music' spread. |
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| Year book, mock up, 17 x 24 cm. Spread. |
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| Photo shoot, backstage, Camberwell College of Arts, Graphic design studio, Thu-19-Apr. |
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| Work in progress, Camberwell College of Arts, Graphic design studio, Fri-20-Apr. |
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| Work in progress (Layout & typography tests), Camberwell College of Arts, Graphic design studio, Thu-26-Apr. |
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Work in progress (Layout & typography tests), Camberwell College of Arts, Graphic design studio, Thu-26-Apr.
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Year book, mock up, 17.5 x 24.3 cm. Cover.
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Year book, mock up, 17.5 x 24.3 cm. Spread.
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Year book, mock up, 17.5 x 24.3 cm. Spread.
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Concept 3.1 Reassessment:
Design wise, this idea is very interesting and it seems working really well as a project about personal awareness. Things that need to be considered though is that the photo shoot needs to be done on a photographic studio in order to use a standardised background and lighting. What is more, it needs to be taken into account the fact that in order to make a year book I will need at least 100 people as volunteers to participate, so as to create the sense of continuity that a year book has.
However, my view is that the current status of this idea has 2 problems -a practical and a conceptual. The former is referring into the difficulty of organising many different photo shoots for so many different people where I will have to explain the idea each time in order to invite them to undertake this allegorical itinerary. The second problem, and probably the most crucial to be considered is a conceptual one. More specifically, it is the fact that the fundamental composition of this sequence excludes 'the experience' and the sense of a progressive itinerary through which a person acquires a state of awareness, since it represents 'the embarkation' (family album) and it goes straight to 'the destination' (year book).
In conclusion, the realisation and testing of this concept is still in progress. What is more, the conceptual problem that arises out of the 'absence' of a progressive journey could be resolved with the verbal description that each person -included in this book- could provide on why they chose a particular picture. This description could be a few lines of text and could be included in the back pages of the year book.
Nikos Georgopoulos,
London,
April 2012
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