1. Project Title: Friends

2. Introduction

This artwork explores the factors that make friendship between people and others. The foundation of friendship between people is fairness and similarity.

It documents the friendships and interactions between my friends and I, by taking pictures and adding text to describe this experience. Eventually I turned these photos into a video to present as a memoir. My main desire to create this work was to document the time I spent with my friends. As I graduate this summer, I hope I can remember our friendship. This led me to the idea of ​​making this artwork. I hope that when the audience sees my work, they can think of their friends and reflect on their friendships with them.

Previously, I hoped to embody abstract concepts through abstraction. Friendship is an abstract concept, and I think about how to express it with figurative documentation. In the end I decided to look at the way my friends and I got along and feel the manifestation of friendship. I found that we were able to provide emotional value to each other. We are all willing to help each other. For example, they will help me with the meal, and I will share the photos of this recording with them. They help others move chairs or clear tables. Our happiness is the same, and we will be happy about the same things. For example, we all like to drink tea and we all think curries are delicious. When one jokes about another, he doesn’t take it seriously and doesn’t take it to heart. This is very important for the maintenance of friendship.

Photographer Julie Blackmon is a huge inspiration and influence to me when I use my camera to capture the moments of my life. His works are very lifelike. He recorded his family members. In his photos, members of his family are doing their own thing, not looking at the camera. It made me feel more natural, more authentic, and more immersive. Seeing these pictures reminds me of my home and the scenes of my childhood playing with my younger siblings. His photos make me feel warm and alive, everyone in the frame seems to be in action.

3. Project Proposal

My theme is the connection between people. I will think about how human relationships develop by thinking about my connections with my friends. At the beginning of college, I was reluctant to make friends, until now I have many friends. My current environment and state make me happy. I’m going to record a dinner with a friend of mine. This will be interspersed with my first impressions of them. This is my last semester at university. I will show my friendship with my friends by documenting this dinner as a memorial. At the same time I will explore the reasons why I became friends with them.

4. Outcomes

  • More than 10 photos with the story near the photo
  • I will present these photos in the form of a memoir. For example, the effect of flipping a book or a page effect is made in a video.
  • I will add my voice over to the video. The content of the dubbing includes: the cause of this incident, the dialogue that took place in the photo, my memories and evaluations of everyone, and the final summary (why can I be friends with everyone)

5. Methods and Materials

  • SONY a6000
  • Computer
  • Iphone

6. Time Schedule

  • 3 weeks: Topic exploration and experimentation
  • 1 week: writing the research paper
  • 1 day: Shooting material: photos of friends
  • 10 days: dubbing, editing

8. Research Peferences

Seeavton: Impressions from Leo, Burkina Faso. He spent 10 days there together with his boss and a doctor. He recorded local people there.

Julie Blackmon: Blackmon is a native of Springfield, MO, and her photographs are inspired by her experience of growing up the oldest of nine children.