Project 2

"Eighteen"

The prompt for this unit was “The Gaze.” I chose to do a photoseries showing how minors are sexualized by the media . The series consists of 10 photos. It shows a girl turning 18. Under the photos we see the quote “She’s fine as hell. If she were 18 you wouldnt be ashamed to say she's a hot piece of ass, and she is…. She's adorable. Her 18th birthday is [coming up] and the countdown is on, baby!” This is a quote from former KNBR radio host, Patrick Connor, about 17 year old olympian Chloe Kim. The title of the piece is Eighteen. The girl is clearly upset about turning 18. This is because your “protection” of being a minor is taken. The quote is there to show that even though being a minor does not stop the sexualization, it does, in many cases, make people wait until 18 to publicly sexualize them, or without guilt at least. The “countdown” is over and that's what I was intending to show in my series.

I used the school's Nikon camera. For lighting I used a ring light and “ the sunset lamp.” A lot of the light also came from the candle on the cake. As for props used in the photoshoot, many of them didnt show up in the final 10. The ones that did however were matches, mascara running down her face, the plates and napkins set up on the table, the balloons in the back and most importantly the cake. After the photos were taken I used photoshop to edit them and place the text. The first step in the process of making a series was becoming comfortable using the school's camera. After I had taken some photos and learned to transfer and download them on my computer I started to think about how I wanted my photos to look and so I tried to find some inspiration. I created a Pinterest board for inspiration for my shoot. It consists of examples of other “sad birthday “shoots or ones that use the same color scheme as I was imagining. The model in these photos is my friend Charlotte. The next thing I did was buy the supplies and find a place I was going to set up, which ended up being my living room. We played around with different poses and different lighting and angles. After I had taken a couple hundred photos I started to go through and pick my favorites. I had to think about how I wanted to present these photos. I had a couple ideas. One was to do a slideshow, or lay them out on a wall in chronological order to tell a story, which is what I ended up going with. Finally I edited them using Photoshop and put in the quote under each photo.

My original idea was actually pretty different from my final piece; the meaning stayed the same but the composition changed. Originally I thought I wanted to do a series of three photos each featuring a different model. The first photo would be about turning 16 and it would have a red theme. Read meaning stock. It would show a girl, similar to the composition of the final photos, In front of a cake with number candles showing 16 and balloons and plates around her. In Photoshop I would add the text “jailbait above her head “the second photo would be the same just with a yellow theme, the candles would say 17 and the quoteabove her head would say “the countdown is on.” The final photo would have green lighting, number 18 candles and the quote would say “turning legal” I ended up deciding against this because of time reasons. I realized that one photoshoot would be more doable and reasonable than three.

This issue of adult waitning for teenagers to turn 18 is a real issue especially in the media. The main reason I wanted to focus on this issue was because of “countdown clock” websites that have a timer counting down to when a young actress turns 18. Oftentimes these actresses have been in the public eye since they were children. Even though being a minor doesnt stop this objectification and sexualization, people know they will get into trouble and so are more hesitant in doing so. However, by waiting until it's legal to sexualize them they have already sexualized them in that process.

This is linked to my first project because they have similar themes of growing up. The piece is about looking back on childhood and coming to terms with getting older. The second is about realizing how the world views you as you get older and losing the protection that comes with being a minor. After completing this piece I know that I want to do more photoshoots and photoseries in the future