After looking closely at Gillian Wearing's work, I came up with an idea for a shoot that follows a similar concept to her range of images with members of the public holding up signs, and the secret confession series. What I did for this shoot was place confessions written in Chalk around Hartlepool to photograph. I think this idea links well to 'Beneath the Surface' because going back my third shoot; it is all about displaying how people really feel about something, but that anonymous feel is there again, so you do not know who is feeling the way they are. For my confessions, I decided to turn to Tumblr users, due to the nature and concept of the shoot, I felt that this would be the perfect place to get some meaningful confessions. I created a post in order to attract users attentions and hopefully make them send a confession to my ask box. I managed to collect over twenty responses, and I have selected eight that I believe are the most suitable; but not too graphic at the same time. I thought of the idea to place the confessions around Hartlepool because I felt that it would be something different and unusual to do. Also following the theme, people often keep their feelings between a select group of people, but putting them up for the whole town to see, is very much like what happens on the internet; and some Tumblr users feel better when 'venting' out for the millions of users to see rather than having a conversation face to face with someone they know. Thinking about the bigger picture, I think that this represents Mental Health very well. Due to the fact, people sometimes feel that people who they are closest to will not understand them or take them seriously. But, talking to people on the Internet is ok, because realistically, you are probably never going to meet them in the flesh, and constantly having them there to talk to sometimes relieves the person of any anxieties or stress they may have at that moment regarding how they are feeling. I have created a slideshow below showing the eight confessions I selected for my images:
I came across a Street in Hartlepool that seemed to be quite abandoned and quiet, and I thought it would be the perfect location for my shoot, as there were a lot of various surfaces, and nobody around. I took some of the confessions I was sent on Tumblr and wrote them out in Chalk around my location. Overall, I am very happy with how the shoot turned out, however I would have liked to collect more images, but the weather was limiting what I could do on the day. The images I did get, I tried to capture the quotes from more than one angle, in order to have images that looked different and interesting to the person looking at them. I liked how the White Chalk contrasted against the darker colours of the backgrounds as this makes the quotes easier to read and therefore, providing more impact when looked at.
