Old, new, peace and quiet.

"Home Comforts"

The above images are taken from the series "Home Comforts". The series explores the way we treat a home when it is temporary and does not belong to us. The ironic title shows my longing for a place to call my own, where it is clean and comfortable and I don't have to spend my days cleaning up other peoples mess!

I can feel a lot of the elements from this previous project creeping into my current project. At the moment I am creating wish lists of the way I want my ideal home to be, I am longing for a clean and tidy house where I can keep my possessions without fear of them being broken by an overexcited housemate. I long for peace and quiet and not to be made to feel guilty or boring for wanting this.

Anna Fox has two projects which greatly interest me. The first is entitled "Made In Europe", in which she asks teenagers to photograph their bedrooms exactly as they are and to write down their hopes, dreams and fears for the future. I have only read about this, I haven't actually seen the end product, but I love the personal nature of it, the curiosity of seeing another persons bedroom, the peeking-into-a-diary feel of reading someone else's hopes and dreams. I would like to undertake this brief myself as an exercise as I feel it really ties in perfectly with the exploration of personal space/thoughts and wishes that I am looking at myself.

"My Mother's Cupboards and My Father's Words"

The second project of Anna Fox's that I am really interested in is called "My Mother's Cupboards and My Father's Words". The outcome of this project is a small book containing images of her mother's very neatly arranged cupboards, juxtaposed with her father's brutal vocal outbursts. Again, it is the curiosity of looking at another persons life on such a personal level that draws me in. Also it made me think of my "Home Comforts" series, coupled with my very intimately typed out wish lists. Perhaps it would be interesting to couple the two together, would they have the same jarring effect as Anna Fox's coupling of beauty and horror? I would also like to record my wish lists onto tape, (dictophone perhaps?) for them to be viewed at the same time as the images. I don't know if the sound of my voice would work well with it, or if I would be too uncomfortable to speak on tape, but I think it will be interesting to find out.