The Heads Experiment

After meeting with potential subjects for this project, I met up with a character who collected buttons and receipts, as mentioned in my previous blog post. She expressed her concern about being photographed, as she is a high up figure in the local political body, and being so close to election time, the photographic series may bring bad press towards herself as a person and as a candidate. I completely in understanding about this, and have decided to experiment with an alternative way of overcoming this. After looking into the sculptural work of Jeremy Underwood, I have decided to create a sculpture head to represent one of my subjects, with the intention of experimenting with this further.

I created a head based on her collection addiction, as she refers to it. I managed to persuade her to give me a selection of buttons that she has collected over a number of years, but only the ones that she has duplicates of, or does not have an emotional attachment too. I understand, after meeting her a number of times over a month, that she has a severe emotional attachment to her collection, and gets anxiety if she cannot find her entire collection.

I created this head to represent how the collection she has been gathering for years is consuming her, hence why I decided to cover half of the face with buttons and half with receipts.  Although she has a fantastic job, and is incredibly successful in her career, if her hoarding continues, there many be a chance of severe emotional distress and unrest in her life, when her collection inevitably takes over. I created this in an attempt to get across to the viewer how hoarding can take over someones life, and take the mind with it.

Upon feedback from Matthew, he was not keen on the concept and said I should re evaluate my project, and consider photographing the collection itself in the subjects homes. I agree, as upon second consideration of this image, the bright colours and artistic nature of this, makes something quite emotional and serious, something fun and colourful. However, this is far from the case. Hopefully, by photographing the homes that the collections are stored in, from all of the subjects I have been communicating with, it will create an interesting and thought provoking series of images.