Project III

This idea originated from a colleagues paper on cultural memory at the Texas Capital. I think that the capital and its grounds are beautiful, a great place to start a photography project. I've always viewed the capital as a bright, happy, beautiful, and symbolic place. The paper made me realize that it can be seen in a very different way. The building was constructed in 1882-1888, during the confederate and nationalist phases of Civil War memory. During this time there was a strong movement across the south to honor the civil war. This cultural memory can be found throughout the grounds with statues and other memorials celebrating the war. I personally see this simply as a way for the south to honor those that had given their lives for a cause. Others find confederate monuments to be symbols of racism, hatred, etc. I realized that other people might see the grounds in a completely different way then I do. I decided to take pictures of the grounds with a digital camera. Then I would use photoshop to create each picture in a gothic-dark style to convey these feelings that other people might have. As I went through the project I realized that picking one uniform style for each picture would be somewhat boring and quite effortless. I decided to nix the original idea and go with a different style for each picture, learning photoshop along the way.

During my photoshoot I also thought that I might be able to get the look that I wanted from a Holga camera. The Holga camera was developed in the early 1980's in China as an inexpensive camera that ran on 120 film. As 35mm came out just a few years later, the camera was overrun by its competitors. Ever since, the Holga has had a cult following among photographers. The short reason: the camera is a cheap piece of shit. The long reason: the camera features an unreliable lens that can produce strange results on its pictures, including darkened edges. It is said that no Holga is the same. The case itself can feature small cracks, allowing even more lights to enter and distort the picture. The poor manufacturing and cheap parts of this camera allows it to create pictures that can be quite unique.

The photoshop pictures nor the Holga pictures created the look that I originally desired. However, I learned photoshop as I went along, and created some great pictures to make a wonderful book. Each section starts with the original unaltered picture, followed by a version taken by the Holga, followed by pictures that I edited using photoshop.

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