Peter Menzel

I've been exploring the idea of documenting family eating habits and I've come across the photojournalist Peter Menzel www.menzelphoto.com . He has done some fantastic projects. I found an article about his book Hungry Planet which documents what a family eats in a week in various places around the world. It includes the cost of the food and some details about the family. His website is extensive. It's quick to load and the video clips didn't buffer. I think I'll be spending a lot more time investigating his work. His images are great and tie into some of the themes that I have explored in the past. Although my projects have been on a MUCH smaller scale.

Blog Thoughts

I was thinking about this blog when I went to bed last night. I know, sad isn't it.
Having been brave enough to put a real photo of myself on my profile I realised that the photo didn't show on the blogs that I'm following. Hmph. I've figured out how to add a photo, but I'm afraid I defaulted back to an Andy Warhol style image for it.

I'm also in debate about the colours that I am using. I like to see photos against black (and this is about a photo project) but I prefer black writing on a white background.

I've decided to leave it for the moment and may change it later.

Matthew Pillsbury

The first image that I saw by Matthew Pillsbury  www.matthewpillsbury.com was a photo of the Mona Lisa which was shown at Paris Photo in 2009. The painting and the museum were static but the crowd had disappeared into what looked like ripples of smoke.

He has also done a series called Screen Lives which is very similar to one of the ideas that I had for my project. 

Nice photographs, nice website. Sadly, I knew somebody would have done this project before... rats.

An Idea for the Photo Assignment

I’ve always been fascinated by the way families interact with each other. It seems that the days where a family would sit down to eat together every night have gone. In May last year I decided to take a photo of everyone in the house. I found them all sitting in semi darkness looking at a screen of some sort. Is this the norm these days?

This gave me three ideas for my project.

1. Long exposure nighttime shots lit only by the light emitting from screens
2. Documenting the interaction between family members
3. Documenting family meals