RMIT Bachelor of Arts (photography) Graduate Folio

Three years and varying degrees of headbutting with lecturers over my inability to conform later, I had my final folio assessed. I decided from the get go, on the go big, or go home style of folio. To put all of my proverbial eggs into one basket and run all the way to the bank. Why use a model if you have access to a supermodel right? Hence a month long 5-dollar-9-grain-honey-oat-bread-oven-roasted-chicken-breasted-footlong-sub Subway fueled roadtrip around the USA like, Robert Frank [link], Edward Weston [link], Joel Mayervitz [link] and Terry Richardson (O.K maybe not Terry) et al before me, only with more Subway and no 8x10. The supermodel in question was Frank Gehry [link] or more correctly 17 of his buildings and Yosemite National Park [link]. The choose-your-own-adventure style presentation method for assessment I used was maverick, using the floor of the cyc as a canvas on which to set the adventure caviliar at best. Turns out people want to be lead by the hand.  

I've always disliked the linear narritave dressed up in plastic sleeves (that produce glare seemily no matter what angle you view the image from (just which is the same with prints behind glass (but that is another topic for another day))) that is the standard graduate folio (excluding all the zine loving fashion folks). I wanted something more free form where the viewer had control over the viewing experience to find there own relationships between the images and have the glove preciousness . This was achieved by attaching wet mounting 1mm backing to the prints then putting them through a matte laminiation process, so that each print was bombproof, with any hint of preciousness removed by been able to spill the beer you were necking with your other hand, whilst viewing the images all over it. each print was sperate. and placed randomely on the ground. that would allow the viewer to see both the whole and the singular at the same time and to alter by moving the images around to a sequence that made sense to them.            

I guess the key point is to me they are not art, merely pretty pictures. What holds the series together loosely is my own visual aesthetic which is graphic and listing toward abstraction rather than a conceptual. underpinning.