A Bench

For this task I looked through all my past photograph's of which have a bench in. I wanted to look through past photos as I thought that this would give me inspiration for my bench task in which I would complete from influences of these photographs. This was more of an initial thought/idea in which I wish to develop further later on in the task. I decided to have a bench as the subject of each of my photos as a bench symbolises 'travel''. Many people everyday  sit on a chosen bench which really intrigues me as the bench will have known and seen many different people of different shapes, personalities, nationalities and religions, all within one day. A bench can also be used for many different activities/hobbies including woodwork, a picnic or it can even be used as a memorial for someone who has now passed away. This is what I wanted to capture within this 'Bench' task.

Here are a few of the photographs in which I have taken on my expedition:

I have also added contact sheets of all of my photos:

After completing my 'initial idea', I then decided to take a further look into this task as I wanted to approach it on more of a personal level.

I wanted to experiment and try  taking different photographs of a bench in my own garden of which is a memorial for my Aunt who passed away just over 4 years ago, focusing on different parts of the bench at a given time. I wanted the bench to become unrecognisable to the viewer as its real form and instead focus the viewer's attention onto the detail and texture of the bench from a close-up perspective, as I feel that this will give more of a documentary of the 'bench's' life as you can see the wear and tear from over the years, of which symbolises my Aunt as she was quite rough around the edges but so kind and loving underneath.
To complete these photographs I had to become quite intimate with the bench which was a new way of photography for me to experiment with.

When looking at this series of photographs I can almost see a different, almost sculptural, landscape within each photograph, of what actually started out as a photograph of the bench.

This experiment has worked really well as you can see many viewpoints of both the bench and contextual aspects of which link to the viewpoints and different characteristics of the many people who sit on a bench within one day, one month or one year. However you can also see the sacred aspect of the bench and the fact that no one has sat on it since it was placed in my garden. Now knowing that no one has sat on this bench you can see a completely different side to the photographs and the bench now almost becomes a symbolisation of a 'sacred burial place' or the present state of my aunt's soul within 2011. The bench has almost become an old person in it's own right, it has cobwebs forming, it's fading like that of ages and the paint work is crumbling suggesting wrinkles and the decaying of personality and itself the more it ages.