A LEVEL Personal study research and planning

HOW PHOTOGRAPHY CAN CAPTURE IDENTITY AND ALTER PERCEPTION 

Identity themes 

- identity within culture

- gender identity

- identity in the media 

- identity on social media vs real life identity 

Identity in the media 

Looking at how people are represented in the media, including theories by Laura Mulvey and Earp and Katz on particularly how genders should be represented.

I want to look at how women are seen through a male gaze and feminised to an extreme.

Looking at social media moguls such as Kim Kardashian, Emily Ratajowski and Kendall Jenner and what identity they promote and demonstrate.

For a specific piece looking at mixed media and using magazines such as vogue and Grazia where they are encoded with male gaze images, sticking these images on glasses for by someone on the background of a hyponotise spiral demonstrating the unhealthy addiction to looking 'pretty'

Gender identity 

looking at gender photography I want to explore the masculinity that is expected by boys and how they are taught through society that showing 'weakness' or emotions make them lose masculinity.

I want to explore these types of social issues through photography and photograph boys when they are showing emotion and not conforming to hyper-masculine ideas.

I also want to look at the community of boys who do makeup as I think this is perfect at looking at gender identity and looking at the changes in society.

Rationale 

My theme for my A-level coursework will be 'How photography can capture identity and alter perception', I have chosen this specific theme due to current events and affairs that are social problems in everyday life that I want to explore.

I think looking at identity can be linked to many different social problems such as gender identity and identity in the media, I think my theme covers a mass of important issues that can be covered in powerful imagery.

Identity as a theme has many art movements that could be linked, one of the most literal art movements that can be linked to the theme is portraiture.

Portraiture is a key movement to look at whilst investigating the topic due to it being related to portrait photography which will be a technique that will be heavily used in the project.

The idea of portraiture is to capture someone's appearance, personality and mood, some of these aspects can be focused on more than others to create more abstract pieces like Picassos where he has focused on the personality and mood aspect of the model more. 

Looking at portraiture is important to understand how to capture identity on a more abstract level rather than being very literal.

My ideas for the project have ben inspired by social problems that people are facing on a daily basis, I want to look at society's view of genders and identity as a whole and oppose this by capturing people who are trying to go against the social norm and I think this makes such an interesting image as it demonstrates unique and individuality.

I want to look at many sub themes in my coursework and explore ideas that build up someone's identity as the theme is such a huge blanket term for many other ideas.

I have taken influences from more modern photographers who use mixed media and a very artistic view of photography, I really like the technique of mixed media as I think it allows additional meaning to be placed in the image and allows it to be very interpretative based on the perspective of the audience.