Faith Jones Photography
A Photo A Day - Project Proposal
From a young age my mum has always documented my life. Every birthday, every Christmas, every family outing, she took pictures. Throughout my teenage years I found it somewhat annoying that she always had a camera in my face, however now that I think of it, I find it rather nice. It is lovely to look back on those memories we made throughout my childhood, and I am so glad that I have those pictures to remember those parts of my life. I have also recently realised that this is a habit that I have inherited, documenting my own life. Often, I find myself telling a story or recalling a memory and saying, “I still have the picture somewhere”.
Art has always been a part of my life. Growing up, I will admit we didn’t have a lot of money, so my parents often used to take me to art galleries and museums as they were free and kept me busy for a few hours. This is what had led me to have an interest in art and go on to study art history at university. I’ve never been any good at painting or drawing but gained a love for photography as a teenager. People often ask me what kind of photographer I am and to be completely honest, I have no clue. Sometimes, I would give people an answer like architectural photographer or animal photographer, but the truth of it is I take pictures of anything and everything, just like my mum did throughout my childhood. I don’t seem to fall into a category because I will give anything a go, I just like taking pictures and finding inspiration from the most random things.
A new trend among my generation has got me thinking about my little habit of taking pictures of everything. BeReal is a social media app were users take an image a day at a random time allocated by the app and once posted they can see what their friends are up to at that given time. This notification goes at a different time every day to stop the images from being staged. The user can also post their image late, but it will look as though they aren’t ‘being real’. As a BeReal app user myself, I will often look back on my BeReal’s, even the mundane ones that don’t contain memories. This got me thinking about how I do love to document my life, from pictures with friends to the more aesthetic images like a rainbow or snow and even just the silly stuff that maybe made me smile when I was having a bad day.
Throughout this project, I want to document my life with a picture a day, like a diary if you will. This will be a combination of images taken with my camera and images taken on my phone. I love the idea that there is beauty within everyday life and the mundane and believe that we should romanticise the little things in life. We are not here for long; life is unexpected, and I want to encourage people to take pictures, make memories and find comfort in the small things. Photography is a great way to document and can portray thoughts, feelings and emotions just like other forms of art such as painting or music. Photography is my way of expressing myself. I plan on using Instagram to post each picture and at the end all images will be exhibited online somewhere between January and March 2024. The project will run for 50 days; therefore, I will have 50 images by the end of it.
In conclusion, there are two main ideas that I want to portray within this project. Firstly, that it is important to take pictures often as they hold memories that we later cherish. Secondly, I want to encourage people to see the beauty within their everyday life and enjoy the mundane things that may be unique to their life.