Primary Source Photography and Studies

As a starting point to get my ideas rolling, I went out and took some of my own primary source photography. My main focus was to find numbers ideally in unconventional places, but out in the environment mainly outdoors but some indoors. The aim of doing this was to capture the placement of numbers in real life in comparison to the directors placement of numbers in the film 'Drowning by Numbers'.

A few of my primary source photographs:

 

After taking some photos within the environment I soon realised that numbers were a large part of society and was able to capture a variety of numbers in different settings.Many of the numbers were situated in obvious contexts, though some of them were more obscure. From this I had the idea of creating my own narratives from the numbers so I produced some charcoal studies and then put them in sequential order to see if a narrative could be created.

I am generally pleased with my quick charcoal sketches however I struggle to find any sense of narrative from the sequence of imagery.In this sense, the numbers make the sketches into a complete set which is similar to how the numbers create their own narrative in 'Drowning by Numbers'. Also, the way the images are cropped brings the numbers out of context and allows the viewer to interpret them in their own way, creating their own possible contexts.

As a focus for development, I will explore artists who deal with similar compositions and work with numbers in their work, in order to gain inspiration and find my own personal direction with my project.