BA (Hons) Photographic Arts
Major Project 1
Name Zhilan Zheng(w1553183)
Major Project Title
(Or working title - how and why did this title develop?)
“Social Rebound”
At the beginning, the title of my work was “How to measure the power of legal punishment and moral punishment”. I wanted to use clear title to make my work to be more understandable. However, after my discussion with my tutor, both of us believed that for such kind of somewhat sensitive topic, it was more appropriate to be a little bit obscure in the title. Hence, I finally chose “Social Rebound” as the work title.
The morality-trampling behaviour of someone is bound to cause stinging social response and arouse public anger to a great extent. At that time, there must be someone standing out to give punishments. Such punishments are unpredictable, uncontrollable and even illegal and cannot be dominated or incited by a single person. Such punishments may pose threats to your personal and property safety. It is likely that the damage you have suffered may even outweighs the rascality itself. This is an objective presence of self-protection mechanism of the moral system and is also the general rule of human society.
Research Methods
(What methods have you used during this phase of the project and how have they helped you develop your ideas and inform your major project proposal?)
In the early stage of producing this work, that is, since the end of 2016, I have spent a lot of time doing news related investigations. Specifically speaking, I conducted in-depth explorations to three different types of criminal offense cases in recent two years and analyzed and comprehended the three cases through collecting news reporting videos, the statements of involved parties, direction of public opinion and media reporting to legal punishments. Apart from that, my observations to various kinds of social media software, newspaper and television and media reporting videos clarified my ideas and provided me with a specific direction concerning the messages I would like to convey through my work. I discovered a similarity among the three different cases, revealing my general understandings to them. I am longing to express my thoughts through the way of photography.
Pilot Project
(What have you achieved through the development of your pilot project/s? What have you learned from the process? Identify the main concepts that might direct or drive your major project.)
This work intends to reveal a social issue that is just around us or a humanity fact. There are also open questions to all of us: how do we balance legal sanction and moral sanction in our cognition? Which one is more authoritative and more powerful? As is known to all of us, law is the most authoritative. Certainly, it should be equipped with stronger power and ability correspondingly. However, under some circumstances, legal punishments are not as effective as moral punishments even compare with its commensurate enforcement and punitive measures. My work is originated from my one-year following and investigations to a real criminal case that happened in both Japan and China (for details, please refer to my blog). This work also comes from a continuous doubt in my mind, that is, can we say that moral punishments are of greater power if a person has violated the social moral baseline without violating the law and hence suffers from moral punishments that are far more detrimental to the person himself or herself compared with severe legal punishments to a murder and will be brought with unimaginable and long-lasting harm for his or her whole life.
Through my creation of the work, I tried to understand the two characters from my personal perspective and imagine my reaction if I come across similar situation through the scene construction in my mind. Gradually, I have had some understandings to the environment and atmosphere they were in as well as their mental activities. I settled down two different scenes and character images step by step. Moreover, I have had some command of the way of applying different colored lights to illustrate character’s mental activities and create sharp character contrasts.
Audience and Context
(Has a consideration of Context and Audience made you think about your project in a particular way? Have you been aware of the histories, conventions and audience expectations of particular contexts? Have you considered different contexts and how have you responded to them?)
During my creation process, I browsed some reports’ articles concerning the evaluations to such cases and they all stood on different perspectives. I interviewed some of the reporters about their attitudes and thoughts toward those cases and shared my thoughts with them. They had similar doubts as I did, however, at the same time, they believed that such phenomenon is quite common. Under the Internet era in which information is transmitted rapidly, people hide themselves behind the screens and supervise the behavior of other people except themselves. Everyone can be a critic or a policeman, which reminds us of the importance of self-discipline and self-management. Their answers make me realize the reason why the direction of public opinion can be such a strong and powerful weapon. Hopefully, my work can make audiences directly understand the uncertainty of the environment in which we are in.
Production and Presentation
(Discuss the production methods you have been exploring through your pilot project. What effects do these different approaches/ visual strategies have on the work? What choices have you made in the refinement of your visual approach and why? Is the approach you have chosen effective in communicating your ideas to the identified audience?)
After the settlement of the theme of my work, I recruited one actor to present the character image considering the demand to present character psychological activities with the hope of comprehending the psychological condition of the character in a more natural way. One of the difficulties in completing the work was that the scene should be in prison. Through investigations, I recognized that in 2012 there was a prison-themed hotel called Alcatraz Hotel being opened in London. The environment and facilities inside all corresponded well with my demands. However, I later found that the hotel was opened for only three months. I had no choice but kept searching for other alternatives. Luckily, there was another prison-themed hotel in London. Although the environment was kind of far from my requirement, the atmosphere there was pretty good. I booked a room and the shooting time pretty soon and bought props such as prisoner costume and handcuffs. Since the shooting had to be done indoors, the light was pretty dark. To have satisfactory photography performances, I used flashlights and flashlight filters. Color presence is of great significance in this work. To create prison environment and atmosphere, I tried many kinds of different coloring styles and finally decided to apply vast green color in the work. The character image shown to the audiences in this set of work is a prisoner, who is imprisoned but enjoys a calm and quiet world. He cannot hear the outside public voices. For him, prison is not a cage but a protector. In contrast, through the shaping of the other character, I applied vast red color and orange color to present the character’s guilt, disturbance, pain and suffering. Although she lives in her own home, she does not have any freedom. Her world is noisy and full of public abuses. She is imprisoned in her own home and her home was nothing but a prison.
Visual References / Bibliography
(List the key visual and critical references you have explored during the research process. Discuss how useful these references were for the project and what you learned from them).
http://www.japro.com/ueda/set/02.html
Shōji Ueda’s work has provided me with many inspirations on color and space applications. Different colors can bring different sensual experience. Actually, colors can present people’s emotions. Good application of space structures can directly express photographer’s ideas and present the substantial meanings behind the work.
https://www.weibo.com/fav?leftnav=1#_0
http://weibo.com/ttarticle/p/show?id=2309404142659995339851
These two articles make me realize that results will be divergent if we think from different angles towards the same case. Hence, to realize the ideal justice, we have to have a clear mind and consider comprehensively to draw a rational conclusion in the end.
I want to apply photography as a carrier to express my understandings to current society. I hope I can inspire everyone in the era to think seriously about the relationship between humanity and morality in the modern society and the direct interaction of legal system and public supervision under the Internet era through my works.
