Room photos

I've been thinking about profiling people and their every day lives. I wanted to look at objects or things that can tell a lot about a person, based on Peter Blake's painting 'Footsteps' where it seems that the contents of someone's pockets have been spread out on the floor and documented. I was thinking about the contents of other things that could be photographed to give a similar idea of a person. For example, wallets, bags, cars, wardrobes etc.

After looking at the work of Martin Parr, particularly his collaboration with David Meadows on 'June Street', and Richard Billingham's work photographing his family in their home, I was thinking about how people's home environments and the objects in them can really reflect the people themselves. People's bedrooms in particular can be very personal and give a strong impression of a person's character and reflect their every day life. This led me to the idea of photographing and documenting people's rooms to build up a profile of them. It was also inspired by this article I saw (click here) about childrens' bedrooms around the world, which shows a lot about their individual situations.

Here are some photographs that I took of mine and my brother's bedrooms respectively. The main rule was not to move or change anything so as to be completely truthful and authentic. I took pictures of the rooms as a whole and then details.

I discovered that I have a large collection of Ribena cups:

Then moving on to my brother's bedroom:

I based the saturated effect of these photos on those of Martin Parr. I was aiming for a richness of colour and tone which I think I pretty much achieved (although Blogger has messed up some of the light levels AGAIN). I think I've succeeded in documenting aspects of our personal lives. Next I would like to explore more people's bedrooms to build a collection and wider spread of images. I'm going to photograph my parents' bedroom next. I suppose having two people having a room would affect the personality of it. I also want to photograph people in their rooms to give an even more thorough representation and better profile of the people in question.