In Art, we are moving on to our photography work - as mentioned in my previous art blog post. After analysing and drawing a thumbnail sketch from our photographer model, we were to create our own photoshoot relating to our theme. So far I've only taken one photo that I'm happy with. The picture is of my cat in a travel cage. For context, we were going away on holiday, and to ensure our cat stays safe and well-fed, we sent her to a cat hotel (no cats were harmed in the making of this photo). It was pure coincidence that the photo turned out how it did; the camera focused on the cage with my cat blurred out a little behind it, my cat looking straight forward, and that I had just the cage in the shot and not so much the things surrounding it. I just wanted to take a photo of my cat in the cage with my cellphone because she was placed right next to me. In case you were interested, my cat's name is Muffin and we've had her for three years now. This is the photo that I took:
I thought that this worked well with my theme - equality, or rather things about inequality and societal conscience - because one could interpret this photo as the cat being stuck behind physical bars and by her facial expressions you could assume that she wants to get out from where she is or get to the thing that she sees on the other side. But because of these bars, she cannot do what she wants and the cage that she finds herself enclosed in restricts her from doing so. If what she sees on the other side are people (or other cats) playing freely in the open, she may feel that she has not been given the same opportunity to join them because of her situation. Therefore, inequality is present in the sense of these bars physically separate her from everyone else. One may look at these bars from a figurative perspective and see them acting as something such as a mental barrier. Say there's a mental or physical difference between you and someone else, you could get discriminated against for it, acting as a metaphorical cage or fence separating them from you.
My next step is to take a few more photos for my photoshoot and make drawings based on them.
Kia Ora Lauren,
ReplyDeleteI like that the face of the cat is quite visible in spite of the cage grid. You're photograph opens up some good possibilities for further use of the cage barrier as a means to expressing ideas about inequality. Do you think that working with grids as device might allow you some flexibility to suggest inequality?