Connecting Essay 1

The above image is from my shoot number two, whereby I photographed an elderly neighbour of mine at night on the streets smoking. I took inspiration from James Russell Cant to edit my image in this way, as I wanted to create a grainy effect to make it seem as though my neighbour had been captured on CCTV. CCTV is often associated with negative connotations, like crimes, therefore by editing an elderly lady in this manor it would create a confusing conflict in the viewer's mind. I chose to position my neighbour against a brick wall in order to emphasise the fact that she was out on the street to the viewer, in order to solidify the link I wanted to create between her behaviour and that of stereotypical youths. Moreover, I wanted to explore the different ways in which people live their lives, as many would assume elderly people would be in bed at night, or inside at least however by showing my neighbour to be doing an activity against common views I aimed to show the different ways people can live their lives, regardless of age. I chose to edit this image into a circular fashion in order to link my images more to James Russell Cant, who was the inspiration behind my edits. 

The above image is from James Russell Cant's series of images called Haringey, this series of images involved James photographing youths in natural settings, whilst comparing this then to an image which makes them appear as though they are on CCTV. This series of photographs challenges the way individuals look at youths, and their perceptions of what they may do in their spare time. Moreover, this series explores how the same child could take very different pathways in life, either a life of crime or a life of success. The circular shape of the images makes the viewer feel as though they're looking into this child's life, similarly to looking through a key hole. I find Cant's images extremely interesting as they make the viewer think. The circular shape of the image makes the viewer feel as though they're looking into something personal, like they're looking through a key hole, therefore this may create an uneasy feeling in the viewer as they may feel as thought they shouldn't be looking. 

Overall, I believe my image and James Russell Cant's photograph link as I used his series as inspiration therefore my images were aiming to look similar to his initially. We both edited our images into circular shapes; however, I only photographed the individual in the CCTV edit, I didn't photograph the individual in two different scenes. Moreover, another difference between our two series is that my photographs are all of an elderly woman, whereas James' photographs are all of young children, I chose to photograph an elderly lady in order to further challenge the viewer to think about their judgements of how others live, as the viewer wouldn't commonly see an elderly lady out smoking on the streets. My images are slightly clearer than James' photographs, which I prefer as this allows the viewer to see that the subject is an elderly lady which helps portray the main message of my photograph. Another similarity between the two images is that mine and James' images are both taken in the UK, and at night as both our images are dark.