Social/Political Conflict

For this project we got a list of all the major social/political issues that we hear about. I decided to go with the large topic of suicide. I feel suicide is very common and a lot of people know about depression, but the don't like to admit that people are dying from it. In order to take this photo I went into the prop closet at school and got one of the fake guns. I then held the gun up to my head. This was not a comfortable position to be in especially knowing that it could be real for someone else. I took multiple photos from different angles and then went and edited them on my laptop. I chose this photo and then inverted it to see how it would look. Because the background of the original photo was messy and didn't fit with my theme, I erased it leaving my head and my hand with the gun. Once I had the print I wanted, I went back with red ink and painted over some marks in the print and random places. Then I had the idea to color out the eyes and spelled out the word "help" in different spots among the background of the image.

The negative of this picture had informal balance and then wth all the ink and spots I added it became even more unbalanced. The large shadows that are caste on my face and the eraser marks on the edge of the face create a feeling of soft focus on the picture. The color is a big part of my message and helping people understand it. The bright red on the eyes dehumanize it from being one person and now you can put any face in that scenario. Red can also represent blood which also relates to my theme. There are also some fingerprints on the print in order to create some texture and some movement when I dragged my finger along the paper.