Captivity by Ken Wu
Revolving around the concept of human captivity, I wanted to express the evolution of the form of captivity. Starting with my original image, I wanted to introduce the captivity of humans throughout time where time is expressed through strings. Having investigated Japanese culture before in my travels as well as through documentaries, I used the common red string to depict the intersectionality of time which was influenced by the award winning movie Your Name (Kimi no Na Wa). Moreover, for the human, I covered him in black to match the background to hide the focus on the human as well as emphasize the strings that keep the human captive. On the other hand, the second piece of the composition focuses on an evolved state of captivity that humans coexist with. The added components are meant to express digital captivity that modern day individuals are imprisoned by. The dependence of humans on technology has become like chains which bound human behavior and human life. To express the evolved state of this captivity, my portrayal method revolves around cutting part of the digital composition, exposing the captivity of the past as a mirror of captivity today.
For photographing the photos, there was a challenge with a lack of a studio and area to take photos that required a human. Having contacted instructors for possible usage of school facilities without success, I explored using my dorm room as a studio by setting up lights and backdrop which can be seen in the photos below. I first experimented with the ISO and the aperture when capturing images hours before my model was available to test out the results. Unfortunately, I did not keep photos of the experimentation process. When taking photos, there was less experimentation with camera settings and more experimentation with composition, angle, and action. This was due to having a central theme thought out before where composition was vital to communicate the concept rather than lighting.
For the digital process, it was slightly simple. I edited the strings that bounded the humans to appear slightly animated and made it dark to create the emphasis on the digital additions which were completed using shapes and lines. There weren’t many struggles due to past experiences of using photoshop in manners very much like this project where an example can be seen below.
I wanted to make this more minimalistic rather than completely digitalized to maintain a clear connection of captivity through the strings in the first photo and the second photo. I was very satisfied with the clarity of the connection between the first composition and the second composition which reduced any need to edit further. Based upon the concept of “less is more”, I ended my digital process without manipulating too many components.
If I were to improve my diptych, I think that the composition may be more interesting if the unknown presence pulling the strings was presented rather than an evolution to digital captivity. For example, if the second part of the diptych was of a human in white clothing and white background holding the strings, it could create more political meaning to represent the discrimination and captivity that the world exists in today. This would also be more appealing to the eye where there is a clear contrast of black and white where the subjects also have symbolic meaning.
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