3 Words - WEEK 1

This week was slow, because the project was so free. My initial words were: Nick Knight, grotesque and decorate. I liked the contrast between the words grotesque and decorate and wanted to work closely with them. I struggled a little to include Nick Knight into the project because he has photographed many different things that were hard to categorize as his specific style. I found his book 'Flora' which inspired one of my words, decorate.

During my research stage, I decided to change the word 'grotesque' to 'phobia', because i thought grotesque was too vague. I initially looked at common phobias i knew of such as arachnophobia, acrophobia and achluophobia. I then specified my phobia research on arachnophobia and linked it to aichmophobia because spider legs remind me of needles. I linked this research to Nick Knight's 'Flora' work and chose plants that were spiky or seemed to have sharp edges. I found it difficult to merge the ideas together, rather than experimenting with each of my chosen words separately.

In an effort to apply the word decorate, i decided to experiment with the effect of Nick Knights photography used in 'Flora'. I edited pictures of roses i took to make the colours more vivid and the darker shades velvety. I wasn't sure where to take this idea, and used parts of the image i edited, and images from 'Flora' in order to connect them to spider legs and needles. For example, i took images of rose thorns to relate it to needles. I also experimented with the the way sharp objects effect skin - for instance indentation and protuberance.