Tag: reportage photography

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DISCONNECT

Photos & Text by Rosie Simsek

BA (Hons) Interaction Design Arts (Year 1)

The covid-lockdown has created a peculiar separation between inside and outside, and for many of us, the outside has become really unfamiliar. Using scaffolding outside to frame passers by, I took these photographs from my window with the curiosity of this separation in mind.

The scaffolding acts as an urban cover. I can experience the street as an onlooker, with no fear of being looked at myself. There is an unsettling power that comes from looking out of a high up window and observing people below, and an even more unsettling one from taking their photograph. I found it acceptable to take pictures of masked people as their identity is hidden, and this also lends itself to the weirdness that is the outside world during a pandemic. The curiosity extends; who are these people, where are they going, what do they do… Why should I know? And then I walk away from the window into the safety of my indoors.

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Aediculae

Photos & Text by Marta Ilacqua

BA (Hons) Interaction Design Arts

This series of Polaroids focuses on Aeducilae, in Italian known as Edicole, which are small structures used as shrines: niches for sacred statues or images. These function as places of devotion for those who believe in the catholic religion. But also by placing them on the exterior walls of houses, they are ‘taking over the streets’, they are seen by everyone, believers or not, and they have become part of the Sicilian culture in general. Some are big, some are small, they are a very common sight all over Sicily.

I’ve chosen these as the subject of my documentation as I was working on a brief about frames. During the lockdown, I’ve had the opportunity to walk around and examine the frames that were present throughout my childhood, living in a very religious country such as Italy. After selecting the shots that would be part of my series, I started questioning whether the plastic look of the Polaroid wasn’t too ‘modern’ for these ancient frames. I focused on bringing our culture within the photos by rethinking the Polaroid’s frame to fit the subject and taking inspiration from the crocheted doilies very present in our houses. This was done to better represent the cult of these architectonic structures whose function is as places of cult themselves. The last image is an extra addition, with a difference within the series itself, as it is not mounted nor carved into a wall, but is placed on the rocks in the sea, where the area takes it’s name from another sacred symbol, ‘Croce di Mare’.