"Where Children Sleep"

I have really loved my current projects mainly because I have discovered so many new photographers. One I am particularly glad I discovered was James Mollison, his series 'Where Children Sleep' was referred to me by a friend after seeing it in the Daily Telegraph Magazine because he thought it might relate to my bookwork project (which it totally did!!) I managed to get hold of the article and instantly fell in love with his work.

Mollison traveled the world, photographing various children and their bedrooms. Mollison started the series because 'I found myself thinking about my bedroom: how significant it was during my childhood, and how it reflected who I was' which is why I wanted to document different bedrooms as I believe they really tell you a lot about a person as it reflects their interests, aspirations and inspirations. Mollison departed on this project as an idea for engaging with children's rights and help other children to think about inequality around the world. His images show a stark contrast between cultures and wealth and poverty, with children living in squalor to children living in mansions. It was a very powerful project and as soon as Amazon have the book back in stock I am definitely going to buy it!

But for now, here are what I think were the most powerful images from his series. Really showing how different children lives can be and opening my eyes to some of the horrific situations children have been bought up in, it definitely made me even more grateful for my bedroom when I was a young girl.

The Photographic Bookwork

If your home is your castle, then indisputably the bedroom is your throne room. It is the place a seldom privileged few get granted leave to enter, and to the owner it is a sacred area to unwind from an oft cruel world and attempt to regain a sense of sanity.

This holds especially true for the hectic, ramshackle lifestyle of a student. It is one's place of sanctuary, a respite from the burdens of shared accommodation and the setting for multiple attempts at debauchery.

A bedroom can say a great deal about the inhabitant, and within these pages is depicted the boudoirs of a select group of individuals, with each shot delivering an insight into the hearts and minds of the souls represented within.

As those of you who keep up-to-date with my blog, you will know my Bookwork project has been all about bedrooms, and by photographing this intimate space I hoped to be able to create a portrait of an individual without photographing the person in question. So here is my book that I have created on blurb.com and has been sent off to be made. But until the final thing arrives, here is a sneak peak for all of you blogger fans out there! Let me know what you think!

Knock Before Entering by Claire Organ | Make Your Own Book

Simryn Gill's 'Dalam' - the inspiration for my bedroom project.

I saw Simryn Gill’s series ‘Dalam’ exhibited in the Tate Modern, where the images covered an entire room, top to bottom with brightly coloured rooms. When I researched more into what the project was about I became fascinated with the idea. She travelled around Dalam and photographed stranger’s front rooms. What I love about the images is how they really display a culture completely different from ours, especially as the country she was in is very religious. Each room was brightly coloured and full of beautiful artefacts and give a window into the lives of these unknown people. It is Gill’s project that has really inspired my idea. Unlike the area that Gill photographed, I don’t think England has a strong easily recognised culture and we aren’t very religious anymore and therefore to me these types of front rooms don’t exist anymore, many houses don’t even really have a front room. Therefore I decided to photograph bedrooms because to me bedrooms are an important space to people, very personal and private. I know that when I visit someone news’, house I always like to snoop around in their bedroom as it really shows a lot about the person. Therefore using Gill’s idea I am going to adapt it to photograph different bedrooms. I really like how she uses the same format for every picture which is something I need to experiment with and decide how to photograph the bedrooms as I would like them to all be the same format as well. I love how vibrant her images are and hope my images have the same bright, homely feel to them. She used natural lighting to create her images which I too will be focusing on, or possibly include a camera flash as well, just to get an even light for the whole bedroom, again this is something to experiment with in my first shoot. Although Gill’s work is mainly about culture whereas mine will be about the individual it still does relate to what I feel is a lack of culture here in England. Gill focuses on capturing a space that even though is private, as it is someone’s home, it is one of the most public rooms, that guests will see and therefore it is clear that these people have put a lot of time into making a room they can show off with pride whilst still keeping it personal to themselves. I was really amazed by the hundreds of rooms pictured in the one exhibition room and feel that a similar idea would work well in book format.

Bedrooms

One of our new projects is entitled 'The Photographic Bookwork'. Well I think you can all guess what the end product of this project will be, yes a professional book. I am really excited about this project as the content can be whatever we want, and as a huge reader myself, I can not wait to see my work in the context of a professional book. So I have been thinking very hard at what I want to do for it.

A few months ago I went to the Tate Modern and saw a room exhibiting Simryn Gill's newest project 'Dalam'. The room was filled with colourful prints that Gill had taken of strangers front rooms in Dalam. She literally knocked on random doors and asked to photograph their front room, all taken from exactly the same angle, style and format to create a repetitive view of hundreds of different rooms. Due to the culture these rooms really let us have an insight to the lives of others, especially as it is a very religious place, so the rooms often held many religious artifacts, which got me to thinking about our culture.

As you already know, I am fascinated in people and what makes someone who they are. In this country we aren't particularly religious and many houses hold no signs of our religious culture, instead for me, bedrooms are the most personal space we own and are really the insight in to showing what that person is like. With this idea in mind, I want to make a book of bedrooms, from young children to the elderly and every age in between. The reason I want to do this is because for me, my bedroom is a private space, somewhere that is completely my own and holds everything special to me. Especially as I am a student and therefore do not own my own house, only two separate rooms in a house that either my parents own or I rent. I find that whenever I go into someone else's bedroom I always love to snoop around as in my opinion it really shows you what that person is about. At the moment I am thinking of doing one whole bedroom shot for every person, done in exactly the same format, position etc and then a detailed shot of something that either catches my eye or that I feel represents the person I am photographing the most. For now I have done some very basic tester shots of my room at University to get me going and see how I can go about starting to get a collection of bedroom photographs. Let me know what you think!

Click on image to enlarge

'In five years time where will you be....' - Well hopefully making images like Carlos Arroyo Galaxia

With two new projects beginning and a New Years Resolution not to leave work to the last minute, I have gained the excitement back for my course that I lost thanks to the 'Contemporary Technologies' project... finally I get to photograph my own images again and this time decide my own brief, be in control of EXACTLY what I want to do. However, the daunting thing is, what is it that I exactly want to do? At 20 I feel that life is still an open book and I am young enough to not know, but in reality I finish university in just over a year and then am thrown into the big bad world. With my 'Negotiated Practices' project, my tutor has asked us all to fill in a form all about where we see ourselves in 5 years time. Well for me, hopefully as a successful band reportage or editorial photographer but in the current climate it's more likely I'll be alone, jobless and penniless with a very nice camera to keep me company.

Therefore in light of this what am I doing, where am I going melltdown, I decided to actually do something about what I want to do and really start researching into well, photography, so that my next two projects will be all about me, my style, what I like and what I want to create. I have started to think about doing more work experience (the last couple of days I have spent with fashion photographer Victor de Mello, assisting his shoot for the Sunday Times Style Magazine) as well as really researching into photographers and I happened to stumble across the beautiful work of Carlos Arroyo Galaxia in 'Dazed and Confused'. He is a Spanish born photographer who captures his subjects with 35mm film focusing on the space of others, both happy and melancholy. His new project 'I Wish You Were Me' shows almost an obsession with bedrooms and how they relate to people, something that I have been looking into doing for my 'Photographic Bookwork' project as people's bedrooms have always been an interest to me and therefore his work really fascinated me.

For now I leave you with some of my favourite shots from his new project and hope you love them as much as I do!