I have been fighting visual equations for some time until the other day. I sat down, nested, a good range of music (I cannot work without music- favourites being The Clash and Gogol Bordello) had my sketchbook and started work.
Coming from a social science background (my A Levels included Social History and Sociology) I do usually jump to that for contextual research. My favourite idea was boy/girl opposites and possibly simplifying them down the 6 images until left with something like a circle and square. However, then I jumped on the idea of blurring, which then moved onto postmodernism. Postmodernism literally means 'the end of modernity'- pure postmodernism believes that in society we are no longer trapped by the circumstances we were born with (gender, class, race, location, religion, age) but that we create an image for ourselves by what we buy- the consumer society. Women can be men, white people can be 'black' (tanning), old people can stay young, we can choose our religion and our location etc.
So I started by taking photos by the things around me. Below is Mike, a friend, and one of his housemates, Caz, for the male/female blurrage. Mike (he will kill me if he reads this) comes from a middle class background. It's not cool apparently so he won't admit it but there we go. I, on the other hand, come from a low working class background. I was having a bit of trouble about representing class without going down the cliche route of chavs and emos but teenagers from different classes do have severely different fashions. So I took photos of our shoes (below). The Dr Martens are mine (those talked about bought from Camden Market) and the trainers are Mike's. Dr Martens usually represent punks and skinheads which are working class fashion statements- DIY, Oi music etc and 'metallers', 'skaters', 'emos' etc usually come from middle class backgrounds.
