To portray the fear of being watched and the fear of Big Brother I had an idea to follow my friend around York and take pictures of her from high vantage points so it looks like the view from a surveillance camera. I then decided to research photographers who have produced work on the theme of Big Brother and I found a similar project from Jill Magid who spent 31 days in Liverpool and worked with the county council and the Merseyside Police to access CCTV footage of herself.
When I looked at this project by Jill Magid I realised that if I wanted my friend to stand out when I photograph her I'm going to have to get her to wear something bright rather than dull colours so it shows continuity within the set of photographs that I take. I think Magid's project is a really interesting approach to the theme of Big Brother because she's gained access to video stills of herself. I would be quite interested to see a selection of stills of myself walking around a place and see just how many images there are and notice cameras are in places that I've never seen before. Magid had to work with the police and write lots of letters and fill in lots of forms to gain access to these images so I think it would be very difficult for me to access anything like this.
I would also like to try and photograph a screen showing surveillance cameras. For this I could go to my mums work where I know there is a monitor showing a back door which is covered by a surveillance camera. I could ask my model to stand in front of the view of the camera, then go inside and photograph what I can see on the monitor. I can look at the work of Lee Friedlander who is famous for photographing screens. Here are some examples of his work:
I will need to be careful and take my time choosing the angle and settings of my camera because I think photographing a screen may be difficult because of the glare that the camera might pick up.
Geneva Wrona
This is a project on the theme of Big Brother by Geneva Wrona.
This is a project I found by Gevena Wrona. I think she is trying to say that you can never escape Big Brother and it trying to emphasise that by photographing her model in his own home. Even though there won't be surveillance cameras in his own home I think Wrona did this to emphasise her point that you just can't escape it. I especially love the photographs where the man isn't the first thing you see in the image and you just notice him in the background, this gives a very creepy effect to the set of images like someone is watching you rather than you are just being watched in general.
Sivinjski Danijel
This is a project by Sivinjski Danijel from Serbia who photographed lots of surveillance cameras to show just how many they are and how they're always watching. The project is titled "f*** you big brother"
I really like this approach to the theme of Big Brother. I really like how the images work well as a set and they are all shot in a similar way. All of the images seem to consist of quite pale/beige colours with a hint of pastels running throughout the set. I also like the hazy lighting in the images. I would like to take photographs of cameras as well as taking photographs of my model from the position of a camera. I think this will emphasise my theme and concept and might make my audience realise just how easily we are in view of these cameras and being watched. I think it would be good to take a similar approach to photographing cameras as Danijel and keep a similar style/colour scheme within the set of images.
This is another image I found by an anonymous photographer who took a different approach to the theme of Big Brother by photographing people though their windows.
This set of images takes a different look on the fear of being watched, rather than Big Brother which is often controlled by the Government or Council, these images were taken by someone outside someone's house, photographing them at night through their window with the lights on. This makes people really easy to see from the outside, but whoever is outside is not so easy to see from inside with the lights on if it's dark outside. This changes the theme of the photographs from being watched by Big Brother, moving towards being stalked/watched by a stranger.
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