Hereditary
28 December 2019
This is a series of unconventional family portraits, one of my very first university projects for a media design course.
All of the photographs reveal bitterness and hostility, and even if they were close or appeared comfortable, you could detect the coldness in their stare or stance. You could definitely sense the anguish behind their eyes in some of the photographs, which is what I was trying for; the raw emotion and agony is what also makes up a family; it may not always be rainbows and sunshine, but they still love one other unconditionally, and this is what family means to me.
Several of the pictures make use of gold (whether in paint or leaf paper), which appeals to the eye both aesthetically and emotionally. The blue tones and colours in the images work beautifully with the colour gold, but gold also has deeper meaning since it is linked to emotions like love, compassion, warmth, and happiness—all of which are central to the concept of family.
I made an effort to manipulate the light as much as possible in my photographs and to accentuate the lights and shadows, which stand in for the dark and light times in any family. As a result, I took pictures when the sun was at its brightest and would provide extremely crisp shadows. Given the recent weather, this was quite difficult, but I tried a few different things until I was able to make it work.
Hugo Comte's thought provoking photographs served as the primary source of inspiration for this project.
