"To whom this may concern" - photobook excerpt
About six months ago now, we got the task to create a photostory / Documentary for our "Non-Fiction" class. While almost everybody else from my class started with searching for a theme and or story, I just started taking pictures on my walks.
After showing my pictures to my teachers, it became clear that I liked photographing things everybody normally doesn't care to look at. So I started going on walks more. After a while, it became apparent that I documented both my neighborhood and my family, so I just kept on shooting that and it ultimately became my theme for the assignment.
"To whom this may concern" became the title of my book, because of the intimacy of the pictures. Its existence is only relevant for the people that care to or feel inclined to look at it. It becomes something that will always mean more to the people involved than it will for anyone else.
It's also worth noting that I worked exclusively on film for this assignment. film gave it this authentic, organic feeling and allowed me to work slower, which kept me in the moment more. It also worked better for consistency, in my opinion. I used different film formats (35mm, medium format, and large format.) and mixed and matched them to tell a coherent
story.
I used 35mm for the majority of the images, simply because I could get a lot of images on one roll. For my 35mm shots, I used ILFORD PAN 400 but pushed it to 800. I did this for two reasons: faster shutter speeds and more grain.
For the medium format shots that ultimately didn't make the cut, I used ILFORD HP5. Just like the ILFORD PAN 400 mentioned earlier, it pushed it one stop. For large-format, I used FOMOPAN 400. I used this film solely for its price. I didn't push this film either.
The diptych I'm sharing today is one that I really like. Its a correlation with on the left a prohibited area of the nature reserve I often go for walks and a close up from a 4x5inch portrait that I took of my dad.
I just liked the correlation between the camera surveillance sign on the fence and the close up of my dad's eye. You could also argue that the bushes, trees, and leaves form a hole in the middle of the image that could be seen as an eye
