The Boxer

The image that launched my photographic career!! This was the first image that I ever took; I had started an A-Level night class in photography, and had never used a proper camera (manual) before in my life. The Brief was 'Portraiture' and that was it, I had decided to find someone as interesting as I could to photograph, someone with a story, a story that I could capture within the image. So armed with my just purchased 2nd hand Nikon FE2 I found a local boxing club and went along. I kind of new what I wanted to achieve before I even got there but didn't think I could do it. Once I looked through the lens things looked different, I saw the world with different eyes, images were everywhere, and where ever I looked I became inspired excited passionate. I knew I was where I should be, and this is where I found my passion and hunger for photography.

Break Me Gently

The whole process has been a learning experience for me where Stacey was concerned. I started out with very preconceived ideas as to who she was and why she behaved like she did, I suppose in a way I just saw her through everyone else’s eyes, before I actually learnt to look by communication and understanding.

I wanted to explore Stacey’s identity at the start of this project and find out exactly who she was, to enable me in this task I have further educated myself in the writings of many theorists, and found, learned, and applied, their considerations and theories to my work, which has given me a greater insight into this whole project.

I feel I did get answers to the questions that I had posed for myself, the girl that I thought Stacey was is no more and has been replaced with a self fashioning individual successful within her deceptions. I now understand that it is unlikely Stacey comes from a broken or abusive home but more of the possibility of a materialistic one, where emotions are replaced financially, and where a lack of love, and attention, triggers a reaction. As written by Joanne Finkelstein, in The Art of Self Invention; ‘people can have a second identity – a darker side second self.' I am not by any means saying that Stacey is evil, or deranged in anyway, but just merely starved of the right kind of attention.

By the time I had finished photographing Stacey there was an accepted relationship between us. She was aware that I saw her, the true her, in all of those little moments when she let her guard slip I crept in, and documented what I saw. I believe Stacey and I have an unspoken agreement, which is I understand her and she allows me do that.

One of the most important factors of this body of work is how it finally would be presented, I had taken the viewer on a journey, one which in images or words alone would be indescribable, and I owed more to it than that. For many years I have been working towards involving more than just the image to my work, but involving emotion, feeling, passion, all those factors that are needed to make something truly great, to hold you in that captured moment of past time, and make you wonder, make you question, but mainly make you feel. I wanted to put all of those vital elements into this body of work, and this resulted in a motion essay.