Beginning Photo

Assignment - Self Portrayal

For this assignment you will need to shoot at least 72 exposures and produce two mounted prints. These prints should be the very best prints that you are capable of making.Your prints should be color correct, have the best overall lightness/darkness, good contrast and not overly contrasty. It should be matted in such a way that it does not detract from the piece itself.

      As you can tell by the title of the assignment I want you to produce pictures that I loosely call Self Portrayal. For this assignment I would like you to think about these possibilities:

(A)     The way you perceive yourself as different from other people.

(B)     The way you think you are perceived by others.

(C)     The way you think you would like to be perceived by others.

(D)     How you may or may not relate to your surrounding environment

(which could mean any of a number of things such as :physically, politically etc., etc.)

      Although you may elect to use an image of yourself (either your physical body or a photo of yourself) to convey your idea you should consider that this is not the only, or necessarily the best, method of dealing with a concept of self. One method of representing a concept of self which you might want to avoid is the visual catalog approach; a photograph about your daily routine will probably not relate any significant information about you or you life. You might also wish to avoid portraying yourself with liquor bottles, your face in a mirror and/or in any other particularly cliche' circumstances unless you feel you can address them in an intelligent and thought provoking manner.

      I know this is not necessarily one of the easiest ideas to deal with. Some of you may have a very clear idea of how you perceive yourself and/or how you think others might perceive you and some of you may not have given this much thought. In any case you should allow yourself some contemplation of these ideas.

This project is not intended to send any of you into a paranoid schizophrenic frenzy so I'm asking you to be as open as you can allow yourself to be.

This assignment is due: