Form Development (continued III)

At this point in my journey, I have come to a bit of a stand-still in the process. After a few more critiques and discussions on where the project was heading, Zack opened my mind to ideas that were a little less literal in terms of "mad-libbing."

Previously, I had been imagining some sort of board where objects would be slid into spots to form messages. But what would that message be, and would MY message even translate to those participating?

At this point, we began discussing other ways that messages could be attached to these objects and stories could be conjured by the public without literally providing them with the game. We also explored my process up to this point and decided the stand-out visuals from what I'd done so far were in the original photographs I had collected from the antique mall.

I decided to get new images, this time, not taken myself, but from the public-- images that THEY felt had story or interest. The content that drives my project would be chance-based, and perhaps these images would spark new ideas about what people really think about these objects.




I purchased 12 disposable cameras with 27 exposures each and took them to the antique mall. Outside, as people approached, I asked them to take a camera inside and take photos that reminded them or conjured images from their own childhood, adolescence, parenthood, or older years. I also told them it wasn't necessary to look through the viewfinder when taking all pictures to make interesting compositions.
At the end of a 6-hour stake-out, I had all 12 cameras filled from 16 or so different participants (ages ranging from 18-67).

After the developing process, I had over 200 photographs.