Final Statement

Shadow From The Tender Age is completed.
The series is about imagination and reflexivity of childhood.
What are the contents stuffed in our minds when we were still in tender ages? How can these content be presented by them, so that we in today's moment would find out? and how do our own perspective in our tender age reflect to and shape our today's perspective?My 10 prints are constructed in 5 themes, which mostly express minds of the children. All themes are presented by 2 photos and they are one shot from the perspective at that time, which means: the same content that I photograph it from an angle would shoot when I was a child, and I photograph it as an adult to looking it the childrenland.
In short, one photo pretends as "a photo taken from tender age"
one photo as contemporary perspective to retrospect the tender age.

childhood refection

I decide to bring up a project that i did in the past summer as my final research source. The project is a performantive photo series called The School Girl Dairies. basically, I recollect the memories from ten years ago and some memorable trivial were written down in my thereat journal book. In the project I did performances for those trivial event and documented then, in order to explore how the things happened at that time shape my personality and unwittingly influence me in today.
My photography series has the similar theme as the School Girl project one, which they are all about reflexivity of tender ages. but my photography series will be more complex. I will construct my photography from two points of view: one from the perspective of a child and one from present

paper cutting

Although the technique of paper cutting is hard to achieve on 2d form photography, the paper cutting works by artist Peter Callesen(official webpage) inspire me for contiunous working on my project.
the image on left is called Do Not Enter and it has fences construct on the the flat shape of a foot print. I see the meaning of making a barrier around someone's own feet and receive the message of self-protected. This idea of self-protected is existed in my mind as a child too i believe, and it lasts until today.

Ponyo

this is Hayao Miyazaki's new animation Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea. In MARK SCHILLING's article An audience with Miyazaki, Japan's animation king , he mentions that
it's a paradisical time when "you're protected by your parents and unaware of the problems around you". His views of children in the modern world are a bit worried, though, as he wonders about their dependence on the "virtual world" and the lack of contact with the natural world. Because of this, he creates his films inspired by children near himself, with an aim to "understand their world"

water drop expression

a magnification of water drop can expression an eye of child.
so I was looking up some good photo expression of water drop.
the open page of Zach Braff's 2003 movie, Garden State's official website is very very neat. and it reminds me how to coorperate this elements with human figures

Tokohiro Sato

as famous for his long exposure light in landscape photos

the darkness of childhood

I recall a film that I watched when I was 12. It was about a group of children living in the society were accidentally sent to an isolated land and began to lost their humanity and live brutally. The film was striking me at that age and i described it as a hole in my recollection of childhood. The dark piece definitely has its power of fear to be traced and recomposed. I then looked up internet and hope to find out the english name of this film.

the film is called Lord of the Fliesby British filmmaker Peter Brook (which is different from its chinese titled 童年無悔,childhood has no regrets)

Some contact prints

Daniel Weisser'a photo

Young German photographer Daniel Weisser's work caught my attentions today

Atlas sound

this song Twilight at Carbon Lake by Deerhunter is the sound that i image to here when viewing in my photos. The lotus Plaza blog has an entry to describe the image of this sound in --here--

Lyrics:
Go to the shore, and pray for the sea
Go to the land and pray for the sea
Don't go down
Go downtown
Go downtown
Go to the waves of grain in the center of the state.
Go away.
Go to a parking lot, sit on the ground and cry.
You'll never know why.
Start over.
Go to the ocean on a ship.
Wave goodbye to the waves and the frozen shit
that was in your heart.
So long
Time slows when it goes away
away.
go away.
Time slows.
So long.

some pics

I am just trying to print some images from my films. I am sill not sure if i am going to use these 3 from my final prints

this one is a good print and motion capture. the only thing i concern about is that if the darkness would match the rest of the prints

bad print. but i will use the background image later

With Diamonds

there is a phrase in the song Lucy in the sky with Diamonds
that says:
The girl with the kaleidoscope eyes
This words inspire me of the perspective in a child's eye, which is diffused, perceiving things with the kaleidoscopic eyes.
Then, I wander flickr to see how people present the images of this phrase. I see pictures of cherry blossom flowers diffused on the sky and think it will be a good approached.

***original link***

**(finally, instead of photographing flowers i photographed light on merry go around and used beads to present the diffuse lights)

ah chung's drawing

阿蟲,catcity, is a Hong Kong comic drawer...his drawing embodies a feeling of harmony which is like a layer of soft light...some kind of expression i want to borrow

official gallery

Mushroom

Mushroom would be the pattern that i apply to my entire series. The idea of mushroom comes from the discussion about :"kids eat toxic mushroom, such as Amanita, will have an effect of blooming mushroom in their stomach...".
I then do a research of mushroom photography and mushroom in drawing art
funjiphoto has a variety photography of mushrooms. Also, some journal drawings provide me hints to blend the pattern into child figures

Footages shooting

I have 2 rolls of films shot. Contents that match my objective are not ideal but it included:

1) location: an elementary school on the south side of milwaukee
*outdoor: pupils having fun on playground in a sunnyday
*indoor: pupils running up on stairs and afraid to be late

2) location: children playground inside Minneapolis airport
*a geometric form of toy sculpture covered background building
*a girl with this sculpture
*a huge toy airplane inside

dig.version

3) location: Seattle downtown
*a Macy parade: Russian Doll

dig.version

Museumofinnerchildart

As I was considering my subject matter towards my theme of portraying a children-wonderland, i started flickring and find out this group of artist doing illustration of the similar content.

http://www.flickr.com/groups/museumofinnerchildart/

The Sculpture of Takashi Murakami

more sculpture foam research:
i read this article about Takashi Murakami's cartoon sculpture

Yayoi Kusama

Artist Yayoi Kusama once did installation works on exterior field in order to blend her signature polka dots into the nature. Examples could be the pumpkin on pier, the polka dots on tress along a city road in Singapore, and polka dots floating on river.
The reason why Kusama applies Polka Dots in her entire art career is because that in her childhood, she suffered hallucination and severe obsessive thoughts. This experience enables her to fill her artworks full with the surreal pattern. In my final series I am also very interesting in using the pattern of polka dot to illustrate a different visual perspective. I notice the extreme contrast between the pattern and the environment, which is mainly through color. In later research I will look for information about how to apply color contrasty effect onto black and whit photograph. I have already had clear approach to the hue of blue.

OBJECTIVE-2

Under the same idea about a photographs from children I have another approach to photograph fantasy. In other word, the images left in kids’mind but not the real world. The best illustration about this idea is some film stills from director Michel Grondry, who excessively uses his childhood experience to his films and presents the world in a fantasy way. The way that I practice this idea could be to observe the things I see in a child’s logic for finding abnormal shapes and objects.

OBJECTIVE-1

The kids’gallery on the website provides a great source for me about image from a perspective of children, which is something that I am going to explore in my final photography series. From viewing the gallery I have noticed the most basic characteristics of the image that is low horizon and distort angle (the distort angle shows the ignorance of scholastic photographic rules). In connotative interpretation, the images embody the interesting objects from their viewpoint and their desire of capturing their interest that defends all the distracted elements such as consideration of framing and blurriness. Also, it is noticeable that images from their perspective can magnify normal size objects. Everything is gigantic in a child’s eye. All in all, the kid’s gallery enlightens me my potential desire of mimicking a certain perspective to take photographs.

:"“We believe that photography is an effective tool in igniting children's imagination and building self-esteem.” ":