Works in Progress

My final photo project for university is called 'Works in Progress' and contains twenty personal portraits of final year students working along the artistic spectrum.  By photographing the students on the eve of graduation they are frozen in stasis as what they aim to be.  As a result, each of the images is titled with the person's name and their intended profession; for example, 'Peter Stephenson, Filmmaker'. 

Each of the portraits were conceived through dialogue with the artists with location and composition being variable depending on the their likes, dislikes, interests and influences. Katie 'KT' Stevenson [Poet], for example, was photographed in an urban environment as her poetry is based around Belfast and city-life.  The compositions begin as sketches and on the day of shooting there will always be ample room for spontaneous collaboration or improvisation.  In KT's case the basic composition was pre-planned but having no shoes was her idea and the person passing her by was a welcome addition.  

Sadly there were people who were photographed as part of the project but as the idea became more and more refined, shifting from Belfast based artists to solely final year artistic students on the cusp of leaving academia, they had to be dropped.  I feel this series could be extrapolated into an ongoing project where the location could be changed, the number of participants could be increased or I could wait five or ten years and do a retrospective to see how the people are progressing along their career paths.