I grew up a very sheltered, introverted kid. I hadn't seen much of the world. My convictions of the world were built entirely on the books I read, the settings and the opinions of the authors. I wasn't very easily influenced by the opinions of real life people around me, yet I trusted the magical worlds of Enid Blyton or J. K. Rowling etc with all my heart.
Since I was a very impressionable kid, the works I had surrounded myself with, all told me of a world where there would be unconditional support for a child and I dreamt that I could do anything. Yet, the reality I saw in my hometown was very very different.
Like a lot of other children, I come from a broken home. My reality didn't exist outside of the doors of my house and the reality inside was a nightmare, so I treated it as such. My books gave me company and an escape, and they soon morphed into my own reality.
Later on when my family moved away from my hometown, I realised how different the real world was, granted that the place where we moved to was quite unconventional. It has affected my work in so many different ways, when I moved it was as if my eyes had opened. I wasn't looking differently at things, I was just really seeing everything for the first time, and that really shaped my work.
The jump from middle school to high school made me hyper-aware of the people that surrounded me, and as an introvert I became really good at observing from the outside, so my attention to detail was very complete, and it really helped warp the way I look at my models now.
As a high schooler I spend a lot of time on magazines, and watching movies and am very familiar with the current trends and pop culture, and it helps me really find direction in my work. As a teenager my hormones also play a big part in documenting the flow of mood-swings in my work of both photographer and model, and using it to our advantage.
My work warps with my state of being every now and then and it is quite educational to look back to how my technique has evolved from when I was in middle school to how I am in high school.
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