Before all of this happened the idea that I was beginning to formulate for my final project was to create what would essentially be portraits in the form trading cards of friends from Bowdoin, specifically seniors. It was built on nostalgia and wanting to hold onto these people, to create some sort or relic or embodiment of who they are. I wanted it to be tactile, to pull the images out of a box in our exhibition, as if they were baseball cards (or maybe Pokémon cards if that’s more relevant for our age group), or to just have them feel like a box of photos. I wanted them to be almost like carte-de -visite of these people that had come to impact my time at Bowdoin so much.
With everything that is going on, I figured that I would have to give up this idea, but I just couldn’t. In many ways it felt more relevant than ever, especially given that we are no longer able to make physical photographs in the photo lab and instead are stuck working through the screen. So, I have chosen to continue with this idea with some edits and elaboration on what I was thinking before.
From the start, my goal with this project was not to try and somehow distill or capture the character of one of these people in a single photograph. I am not trying to manufacture a “Winter Garden Photograph.” Instead, I am hoping to critique this idea with some sarcasm.
So far I have reached out to 12 of my friends, fellow seniors who are all over the country and have asked for them to think of skill, trait, hobby, characteristic of themselves that they want to represent in a portrait. I have left the choice up to them. The goal of this is to play with and challenge the practice of how we distill people down to a certain trait or skill and how that really fails to capture who they truly are. In addition, I have left the choice up to them as an experiment and challenge for people to choose how they want to represent themselves. I have told them to somehow represent this characteristic with a prop or props (or an outfit) and then to stage a portrait of themselves taken by someone around them. I am hoping these will look like the very staged trading card photos that are made for kids playing T-ball or rec soccer. I will also be making one of myself.
Another idea that I want to address in this project in relation to the initial idea of nostalgia, and perhaps more so corrupted nostalgia, is how we so often now “need” evidence of connection and friendship with people and how this manifests in social media (i.e. photos of friends, tagging people, etc.). Friendships begin to shift more so into collector’s items for some in this practice. On the flip side of this, during this pandemic, our ability to connect with the people we care about is strained and made far more difficult. So many of us just trying to hold onto and maintain these connections that we have made and “collected” in our lives.
These portraits that I collect I will edit and then format to be made into actual trading cards. This will include the person’s name, and likely some arbitrary facts about them on the back. I also have opened up the opportunity for some people to come up with a title or nickname for themselves. It certainly is odd to not be the person that is actually taking the photos for this project. I am relying almost entirely on others ( of course with lots of my direction). But, I kind of think that this approach to my project really captures the experience of this pandemic. I am trying to forge this connection, to in some ways acknowledge and ignore the distance. I am dependent on others as all of us are, as the whole world is right now. I know that doing this project would be so much easier and in many so much better if I was able to standardize and be the photographer. However, that is not possible right now. This project will go on though, just as life will.
Details:
Digital images that will be formatted into “trading cards”
Timeline:
By 4/28: Reach out to portrait subjects to be a part of the project, research possible printing locations for the trading cards (Nations Photo Lab, Topps, etc.)
5/3: Receive photos from portrait subjects
5/6: Format and send trading cards for printing
