These cards were all made from photographs taken by each individual. The choice of action/pose for the card was not dictated by me, but by each person on their own, sometimes with some assistance from me. The “facts” on the back are also the unadulterated answers from each individual. This project is meant to play with and question how we present ourselves in the world, how we distill a person’s identity, how so often it seems that friendships are presented as collector’s items, and finally for the sake of tending my nostalgia and how much I wish I could be with these people.

These cards will be printed, the project fulfilled will be one that is tactile, and I will sending sets of these “trading cards” to each individual who assisted me in the project.

For my final project I decided to combine my interest in photography and mixed media/collages. I made 5 different pieces that express the range of my emotions and feelings during this time. I think it is important to have something physical to represent this strange time and I am glad that I was able to attempt to communicate this period of COVID-19 through art. I used clippings from newspapers, magazines, and my own photographs to show a glimpse into my life at the moment. The pieces are meant to represent anger, confusion, and frustration yet also highlight the importance of hope and a positive mentality moving forward. I hope to continue to create works like this throughout the summer and experiment with more techniques to improve my pieces!

Thanks for a great semester & I hope everyone has a safe and happy summer.

-Blythe

Hi everyone, here is a draft of my photobook as it is, but not quite finalized.  It actually posted back to front, but I find it interesting because I think this would be readable both ways. As I stated in my proposal, In this project, I aim to highlight interiority through photographs I want to capture the essence of my Blackness by examining my interior. Mentioned In the quote above, I’d like to highlight desire, ambition, fragility, and vulnerability as my guiding themes to support “the interior.” I planned to achieve this by using a combination of people and objects as subject matter. I decided to add in some of the text from the book that doesn’t go directly with any photo in particular but will encourage viewers to think about the concept of quiet as they view. I would like to know what people think of how my images correlate to the concept, and if the quotes help or hurt the project.

For my final project, I decided to create a first person view short film. Cinematography and filmmaking have been something I have wanted to dive in to for a while and throughout my quarantine I have been doing a lot of research and learning how to do so. Although I love photography, I have always had an interest and fascination in cinematography because of the similarities it has with composition and lighting like in photography, but the differences it has in camera movement, editing and sound. My inspiration for the video came from the research I have been doing over the past month or so, watching other artist’s own first person films as well as other shorter clips and montages. Additionally, my family recently purchased a drone that I have been spending a lot of time flying and taking videos, so I wanted to almost center my short film around it.

Throughout my process of making the film, I realized how difficult it is to create a well-organized film and how much planning is required. There were several instances while I was editing when I didn’t have the right clip and had to go back outside and film more. For cinematography and filmmaking, one has to be conscious of what shots they are taking and the sequence that they will go when editing before recording them. Also, because of background noise I had to record all the audio separately and overlap the new audio with the recordings which was time consuming but I like how it turned out. The bottom line is that I have learned a lot about how difficult it is to plan a video, execute recording it and then seamlessly editing the videos to make a movie. Filmmaking is definitely not something I have mastered, but I really enjoy making videos and would love to continue to make more in the future!

catch me photography final

Hi Everyone, this is my final project. It is a compilation of different members of my family through various moments in time. I have incorporated different Nigerian textiles and fabrics to highlight a significant part of my identity. It’s not entirely done, a lot of the text that is present in the beginning needs to be converted to handwritten text, I was struggling on how to convert a word doc to the software. I guess my number question I have for you guys is there other things you think I can incorporate.