MAS110 PHOTO ESSAY RATIONALE: ALLEYWAYS

MAS110 PHOTO ESSAY RATIONALE: ALLEYWAYS

By: Morgan Loveday and Rosemarie Cruz

In the present society, our cultural adaptation of the quick, immediate and temporal capture of reality is understood as the shortcuts of the "everyday" life. The representation of that "shortcut" to a destination grasps this idea of recognising an alleyway's purpose in creating pathways for the everyday person to arrive at a destination in a short period of time. All around the world these passageways appear unnoticed and unappreciated for its purpose thus grasping the essence of the "everyday" aesthetic. As a sub-theme we thought alongside this concept of alleyways, the idea of journeys for an individual to walk or in this case, run through life not noticing the surrounding environment to get to a certain destination which these alleyways allow them to get to rapidly. Murray (2008) emphasises this understanding of the "everyday" culture of photography as being organised around ephemeral themes and collections. By doing so, this concept of "ephemeral themes" demonstrates alleyways to be a temporary sense of noticeable and appreciated passageways in the everyday life. 

Inspired by the film Touch of Evil, directed by Orson Welles (1958), the dark tones moulds into the flow of the narrative alongside the music composition. These characteristic between the dark saturation of the shadows with the bright tones of the open area, we composed to fit a dramatised theme and narrative of a journey within alleyways from one position to another. Accompanied by the music derivatives of ponopower, the emphasised beat in each transition of photographs creates this mysterious realm that befits the essence of the everyday aesthetics. As majority of the photographs are in motion, the journey throughout the alleyways and how this everyday aesthetic, becomes artistically represented as "shortcuts"to the destination, thus immersing the viewer in the journey that we composed together. By creating variations between motion and stationed photographs, this effect produces a balance within the narrative of the video and a sense of direction in the journey. The transitions between each photograph allows a sense of continuity in the flow of images but through simple transitions, we believed that the quality of the photographs should not be overpowered by the effects as the melancholic ambience is emphasised through iPhoto and iMovie. 

Photographers and Producers: Morgan Loveday and Rosemarie Cruz

Music Composer: ponopower - soft loop

References:

Murray, S 2008, 'Digital images, photo-sharing and our shifting notions of everyday aesthetics', Journal of Visual Culture, vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 147-163.

Music - "soft loop" courtesy of ponopower: Available at http://www.jamendo.com/en/track/909441/soft-loop, published under a Creative Commons Attribution, 3.0 Unported Licence, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0, accessed 9.10.12

Welles, O 1958, Touch of Evil, DVD, Universal Studios, France.