This project is titled "Windows" and demonstrates the concept of "Looking in or Looking out." Reflections in the photograph are essential because they provide a window into the street reflected in the store window.
The things in the store window are juxtaposed with the store window reflection. This interests me because it all looks surreal.
Every window I photograph will present a different narrative. You and I would see inanimate objects that move like us in the windows.
Human emotions are reflected in urban landscapes.
This project was originally going to be about places in Nottinghamshire near Nottingham Trent University, but I extended it to the windows and people in the Metros in Paris, France.
The images complement each other because they share a colour scheme.
They work well because they were taken to observe rather than spy.
The concept of people, places, and objects coming together, whether human or not, is portrayed in these images.
The autumnal colours were considered and are predominant in the colour palette as they fit well with the season, which is a personal favourite.
When taking these photographs between September and November 2023, I considered abstracts, surrealism, texture, shape, mood, and location.
I originally made all my images vertical, but after much staring and consideration, I mixed them up, meaning I now had landscapes and portraits.
One of the reasons I originally made them vertical was to restrict myself even further by making my images narrower so my viewers would only see specific things.
However, I wanted to show my viewers my environment, so I changed my mind. It was the best decision to enhance my work further.
I looked at several photographers for this project: Dominic Sansoni, Arne Svenson, Lee Friedlander, Steve Mccurry, Laura Wilson, Nicolas Goddon and Henri Cartier Bresson.
I still need to finish exploring or looking for new, fun and exciting spaces and places and photographers. The list shall go on until I choose to stop.
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I took my work further, and my secondary focus was when I went to Paris, France; I took an interest in the Metros, as I rode on them daily. When I looked from the outside, I saw different kinds of people of all ages, and they didn’t know I was photographing them. I looked at their expressions and what they were doing; some were alone, coupled up with their significant other, their families, or friends.
I observed all these individuals from the outside, and they were all behaving naturally, which caught my eye, but I couldn't hear them, and that made me start to interpret what they were doing or wondering what they were feeling when I clicked the shutter button.
After I photographed and edited, I started naming these photographs, giving them another element that aligned them with documentary-style photography.
Surrealism maintains the power of the unconscious and our dreams. It can consist of crazy, dream-like, and symbolic imagery. Major figures in surrealism include artists such as Salvador Dali and Man Ray, who was an important surrealist photographer.
It is a cultural movement that first started in Europe post-World War II. Surrealism's goal in art is to transform human experience. Artists in this movement hold with the “unexpected and the uncanny.”
The founder of the Surrealist movement, André Breton, had also trained in psychiatry and Freudian psychoanalysis. Freud's ideas regarding the subconscious and dreams were a major influence upon Surrealist art and photography.Surrealism’s importance was not on the contradiction of something but on positive expression.
I’ve used the reflection of windows to create double exposures as surrealist artists did; for my project, I wanted to explore the mix of reality and fantasy.
I focused on one place in Nottingham, within walking distance from where I stay, and used mannequins that look strange and weird juxtaposed with the reality of the reflections of ordinary life that give the impression of surrealism.
I made all my photographs in colour and kept them vertical as this is the theme for my concept overall, “Windows.”
