I Went For a Chat

I decided to spend a day with my Grandpa chatting about his history with life with cars. It is  - by nature - a very personal project and subject which he was more than happy to talk at length about.

I recorded the conversation and have since transcribed key quotes.

Once we'd talked over each photo, I took them away and scanned them to a high enough dpi to use and enlarge for print.

First Thoughts

Throughout level 4 I've already produced extensive work researching and documenting my main interests, Vinyl, Music, football etc. and so for the sake of not repeating myself for this brief I've wanted to tackle something slightly closer to home.

I thought about what collections I have in my house and whether family members would have anything of interest (I have a big extended family). I came up with two initial ideas from this;

• My Grandpa (Peter Finney) roughly a year ago handed me his life collection of  - largely film - cameras. I've always loved analogue photography, particularly the romanticism behind it in comparison to digital. As well as being aesthetically beautiful objects, I know that these cameras documented both my Grandpa's young life and also my Dad and his siblings' childhoods. This gives them a very powerful and personal meaning to me and should make for a very interesting project if I can pair the cameras with notable pictures that they took throughout my family's history.

• Whilst talking to my Dad about this, we ended up discussing my Grandpas history with cars over his lifetime (we think he's had around 65!). As a youngster I was obsessed with cars and went to motorshows etc with him so we have a strong bond over cars anyway. He also raced Mini's back in the 70's and was lucky enough to own some really interesting cars - Ferraris & Porsches which my Dad believes he's photographed every one of! 

• I'd love to chat with him about both of these and gauge which would be the most interesting to pursue... Perhaps there will be an overlap of both! 

Collecting Things / Case Study / Martin Parr - 'Boring Postcards'

So the summer brief involves collecting, archiving and presenting research on a subject of interest to me.

To start with I've looked at Martin Parr's Boring Postcard collection which has the kind of feeling I'd like to capture with my project. It is a visual collection, tongue in cheek and with content which is made interesting by way of it being brought together as one. 

The series is a testament to the power of a strong collection. The subjects are postcards so boring that the regular eye would have never been drawn to them. 

Parr saw past the lack of interesting features in the cards individually, brought them together as a set and the results are brilliant.

I want a similar feel in my collection, the path I'm choosing does echo the reminiscent feel of this project by Parr.