"Andrea Bruce is a documentary photographer, covering social issues in conflict areas, focusing mostly on Iraq and Afghanistan. For eight years, she worked as a staff photographer for The Washington Post and authored a weekly column called 'Unseen Iraq'. In 2010, she became a freelance photographer in the VII Network."
Image analysis for Andrea Bruce
In the middle of the image, a person is perching on a stool, maybe in someone's home, wearing a t-shirt with the words 'Holiday Taste of Freedom' printed on the front. The words 'holiday' and 'taste' both portray a sense of pithy, and used together with the word 'freedom', it could suggest that the person is unwillingly forced into doing something with a little chance of escape. However, the fact that the person is wearing the t-shirt in public depicts a touch of rebellion. In terms of the technicality of the image, there is a high contrast between the black of t-shirt and the white of the walls, trousers and writing on the t-shirt, which emphasises the hostility of the problem at hand. Bruce has turned the image into black and white, this could be because she wanted to only portray two metaphorical aspects of the image, freedom and restriction.
My Response
For my documentary response to Andrea Bruce, I tried to focus on a few of the common problems and challenges that some young people and students face on a day-to-day basis and try to cover up, for example, stress, relationships, self-harm etc.
Model 1
For my first model, I aimed to portray more the initial stress of exams and relationships, that students and young people can face.
In the first image, I shot the image from behind and over the shoulder of the model. This will create a narrative from student's perspective. The first image shows a young girl studying for an exam. The model wore a plain, black hoodie to create a high contrast between them and the textbook. This could depict the confidence level of the student, black portraying a low confidence, and the white portraying the difficulty of the exam.
In the second image, a student has her head in her hands, showing she cannot deal with the stress and pressure.
In the third image, a pregnent student is looking disappointed and has her hands on her stomache. In this image, I was trying to protray the problem that relationships can cause at our age. The age that people are having unprotected sex at is lowering dramatically, this student is a victim of a teenage pregnancy becasue of this. More to the stress of exams, this student now has a possibly complicated realtioship, a pregnancy, the lack of finance to support the baby and raising the baby on her own.
Model 2
For my second model, I aimed to portray more the results the initial stress of exams and relationships can cause for some students and young people.All three images show self-harm. Arms, stomach, legs. Of course, self-harm is not a good thing, but people still do it. Whether it be a way to get away from the pressures and stress of daily life, or because of their self-confidence and feeling isolated, it needs to be helped and taken care of. We have probably all felt a little self-conscious in the past, but nothing that we haven't got back up from. Reading the NHS self-harm information page, it is all statistics, advice helplines and organisations. My opinion is that this will not help. It is personal and if they don't tell friends and family that they self-harm, why would they call a stranger from a big organisation and tell them all their issues and problems? If these organisations really want to help, it is not enough to just have a phone conversation with the person. One representative, from the organisation, needs to result to their level of pain and isolation, understand their problems and earn their trust. Otherwise, I don't it will work. It is psychological and needs to be treated with care, understanding and subtlety.
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