my epic is my everyday
My epic is my everyday started as simple documentation of my life. I was and I am aware that life fluctuates, I have experienced a lot of lows throughout my life and for the first time in a long time I am experiencing a high, and I intend to hold on to it for as long as life allows me to. I understand how precious and rare this high is and I was determined to document it so that I could always look at it whenever I was feeling sad and remember that life is not always bad. I shot around 300 photos, I used an Olympus Mju ll and a Kodak disposable camera, with either Kodak gold or portra 400. I decided to use a point and shoot camera because they are extremely portable and easy to use, which allowed me to carry them everywhere and take photos inside places that usually I would not be able to. In the beginning, I mainly took photos of my friends, growing up I completely ignored my parents, I did not like their ideas and decisions, so I created my own family with my group of friends, and this project was supposed to be a way of thanking them, however, very quickly I noticed that I was no longer sixteen, I now live in London, my every day is split into two cities and divided between my friends and family. Yes, I might disagree with my parents' life decisions, but the only reason I am even able to do this project is because of my family who have supported me despite my constant disregard towards them. My mom hurt me immensely as a teenager but she is also the person that loves me the most and even though I am not physically with her, she is with me every day. This entire project was very helpful from a psychological standpoint. I create to move on with my life, however from an aesthetic standpoint I was not satisfied with just creating a series of ten to twenty photos, the project was feeling a little narcissistic to me, so I decided to choose five people who at this moment have a big impact on my life - my mother, my grandfather Kira Locke, and Ivan Pinto I wanted this project to belong to them as much as it belonged to me, so I scheduled individual meetings with all of them and showed them the photos I took, I asked which ones they preferred and then asked what the concept of epic meant to them and if they can find it in their lives. I asked them to write their thoughts on life on a piece of paper and then proceeded to create a collage of their photos with the texts they had written and I was able to connect the everyday and the epic.