Location Photography - Interior Brief

The idea for my interior brief came along while I was talking to my tutor, Sian. Several ideas were going through my head, but because this was something that was totally out of my comfort zone when it comes to photography, I simply didn't have a clue where to go or how to set things up. At first, because I was very impressed with my Sian's photography, I thought about doing a similar project. That was, until she mentioned Simryn Gill to me.

Simryn Gill is a photographer from Singapore. I have a post in my blog about her in case you wanted to know a little more. Gill did a project called Dalam (2001). It was a project containing 258 photographs for which she travelled across the Malaysian Peninsula, knocking on the doors of total strangers and asked them if she could photograph their living rooms.

Hearing about her, it really sparked something inside me. I wanted to try this too. However, unlike Gill, who found most people were more than happy for her to take a photograph of their living rooms, there weren't many that felt confident enough to allow me into their homes. Truth be told, I struggled getting the nine separate images together for this brief. To me, that shows the difference in country and culture between Gill and myself. Here in Europe, there aren't many places where people are confident enough to invite a total stranger into their homes anymore. Whether that's because they like to keep themselves to themselves, they're scared I could be recording what's there to plan a burglary or perhaps the houses are full of stolen goods they wouldn't want on camera. I'm not sure about the reasons. But some of the looks I got would suggest I am the world's biggest criminal mastermind.

Part of Gill's Dalam project

My aim was to present a final image that represents people's lives. The photographs aren't overly composed and look slightly chaotic, which to me was to symbolise the lives of the people that own these rooms. Life isn't perfect. From homes with little children to the living room of an older lady that has recently passed away, every single one of these rooms would tell its own story. And that's what this was about for me. They're simply a tiny slice of someone's life. This image below is how this collection should be viewed. Not as the individual photographs, but as a collection. Almost as tho they're hanging on a wall in a gallery. The result of a project that turned out a lot harder than expected.

Looking at my images, I probably should have kept going to try and get more images and create a bigger and more impressive collection. It was so much harder than expected tho, which I think made me give up a lot sooner than I perhaps should have. That's not to say I didn't spent a lot of hours on this, but I think a bigger collection would've been nice. Another thing that has disappointed me is that one of the images has a blur on it. I am not sure about the reason for this, other than that the focus must've shifted when taking the shot. But the worst thing is that I did not notice this until I got the photograph printed in A3 format. The lack of money has prevented me from getting a new photograph and a new collective image printed out. It probably would've been nice if I would've been in posession of a wider lens, because it's surprising how small some rooms are and that way I would've been able to fit more in my images. Overall, I'm quite satisfied with the outcome. It does what I wanted it to do and it has been a great experience as well. Very daunting, but a reasonably original idea.


Image Source:
http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/simryn-gill