Book Planning
As a final piece for this whole project, I intend to make a book, placing all the different images I have created on the subject of hair within it, visually connecting my images together. With the images I have created for this project, I have begun playing around with different zines to test for a submission for this module, to show the work I have created and how I want to exhibit it when it is finally finished.
First Experiment
Below are page layouts that I have played around with, placing images next to one another that I feel connect together visually and contextually. With the portraits, I have placed front and back and side and side images together of the same person, to show how someone wears their hair from different angles, as if I were showing the person whole head from front all the way around to back and front again. I liked playing with these diptychs and the portraits sitting together look good, but perhaps they need to be more considered, and due to the subtlety of the images, they each need enough space to sit on their own and so should have their own double page each rather than being seen as a diptych. I also feel this way with the still life images that I have played together, again during experimenting, as they're such bold images they need a whole double page spread for each, maybe even a full bleed so the dark background falls off the page, alongside the macro images of hair, where the images are full bleed so the hair fills the page and more! This was a great experiment and I feel like I will try and make this into an eBook so that I can see all the work I've created together. Obviously I don't feel like this is a finished project, as I am going to continue it in the next term in ESP, so therefore I don't feel its right to create a book for this initial submission, especially as the images are still experimentation themselves, with different lighting styles and subjects, and so they don't sit together visually just yet. An eBook will allow me to see what I've done so far and where I can go from here, how the images are look together and what I need to do to visually connect them.
Book Research
Victoria Forest - Bookmaker/ Designer
A Biography of Disappearance, Algeria 1992–Autograph
This book focuses on the cancelation of a general election in Algeria in 1992 and the 10,000-20,000 people who disappeared. The book is full of portraits of the people that went missing, 'page upon page of faces give the reader some portent of this national tragedy.' The subject is very emotional and heart taxing. However, the design of the book is what intrigues me. The way the portrait images are placed all together in one large grid, people alongside people, intrigues me. I feel as though I could play around placing all my portrait images together in a grid formation, to show that the one thing that changes is the hair, that the focus is on hair and its changeable materiality. I would then make each portrait big, filling each page so that each person can then be considered as individual and each hairstyle can be seen clearly alongside others to see the prominent differences.
This book focuses on the cancelation of a general election in Algeria in 1992 and the 10,000-20,000 people who disappeared. The book is full of portraits of the people that went missing, 'page upon page of faces give the reader some portent of this national tragedy.' The subject is very emotional and heart taxing. However, the design of the book is what intrigues me. The way the portrait images are placed all together in one large grid, people alongside people, intrigues me. I feel as though I could play around placing all my portrait images together in a grid formation, to show that the one thing that changes is the hair, that the focus is on hair and its changeable materiality. I would then make each portrait big, filling each page so that each person can then be considered as individual and each hairstyle can be seen clearly alongside others to see the prominent differences.
Out of the Blue - HRH The Prince of Wales's Sustainability Charities
This book design is inspirational with the choice of both text and full bleed images. For my still life images, macro images of hair, I would like to make them full bleed, to show every tiny detail within the image and make the hair look as though its spilling over the pages. This book uses full bleed images to do a similar thing, making the images of the sea look never ending, as if the sea flows over the edge, rather than in mine being the hair flowing over. The inclusion of text is also important, obviously here to describe the images, but for mine I am intrigued in adding a little quote from each subject in my portraits, on hair construction, why they wear their hair as they do and maybe one object that they use to construct their hair everyday.
Obviously this book idea seems a little premature due to the fact that the project is not finished at all, however I want to this initial submission as an opportunity to explore what the work looks like as an eBook so far as I believe it will help me see what stage is next within the project and which experiment has been the most successful over the course of this initial project.