Mid term evaluation

As a whole, my main aim for this project was to use documentary photography to capture the "darkness" stereotypes of teenagers/ the youth subculture, however, after doing around two/ three shoots, I decided to extend my research into youth in general, in showing the comparison between the stereotypes and counter types. This way I found I could gain a better insight in the collective identities of youth culture because there would be different perspectives.

So far in my most successful shoot has been my fashion shoot, I was able to portray to my audience the raw form, this shoot wasn't set up. In order to achieve this I looked out for different people wearing different styles of clothing and then I asked them whether I could take their photo. This shoot links very well with the photographer Ali Seglins, by not including the face in the majority of my images within this shoot, my audience are left forming a personality of them based on their clothing. The reason I think this shoot was the most successful was because I didn't set out to take it all on one day, I took photos when ever I had access to the right "look"/ subject. This as a whole makes a more "realistic" form because I was at college on all these days, I was able to choose people who chose to wear that outfit that morning- something they generally wear. At the same time this shoot also interlinks with work of photographer Gavin Watson- with these images I have shown the skinhead era through clothing such as DMs. Finally, this fashion shoot includes an image which is inspired by photographer David Bailey who captured a similar image with Mick Jagger.

As my shoots continue, I do believe it would be better to experiment more within he studio as well, this way I can show experimentation through manipulation in photoshop- for example, I can use silhouettes to show the outline of youth and my audience would be left finding the stereotype of their "identity" through their silhouette which I think may be really symbolic. Another way I would like to further my extermination in my last shoot, would be to purely use computer experiments- through typography- taking photos of subjects and using their stereotype to fill their body. The reason I would like to use these is because I think I need to further improve my techniques of manipulation, the beginning of my shoots were purely documentation and through out I hope to move more the the manipulation side of it showing how youth has progressed it has slowly changed- in the way nowadays its hard to tell what the truth is within people and what is the lies.

However, even though I have taken shoots of the counter-stereotypes and find them really interesting in gaining a wider insight of youth culture as a whole, I find the most successful shoots are my stereotypical youth culture shoots, therefore from now on I believe it would be better to go back to my original plan of purely shooting the dark stereotypes of youths. This is because I find it much more intriguing. Notwithstanding this, I also believe that this way my final series of images would stand together much stronger. Additionally, I find this topic much easier to use documentary photography instead of set up photos.
Due to the success of my shoots such as the skateboarding and Leake Street Graffiti tunnel shoots, I hope to be able to reshoot these and experiment further into my project ideas.