USA Projects

I am proposing to make new work to take the BAG shoot to Glasgow, Montana before my solo exhibition goes up at the Glasgow Goodkind Gallery in June.

This work would be produced in the community of Glasgow, Montana. The reason I wish to photograph in Glasgow, Montana is to get away from the perviously photographed urban areas. I am looking to photograph people from a variety of backgrounds and professions that may not be found in urban areas. The idea of adding a portrait of a cowboy or factory worker would add a new depth to the existing project. 

 http://www.glasgowgoodkindgallery.com/ 

In June of 2010 I performed a similar practice in Urbana, IL. I went there and photographed the people of the community and their bags for the project. Their portraits were exhibited alongside portraits from NYC, Philadelphia and CA.  I would like to photograph in Montana to broaden the scope of people photographed even further. Getting out of a city with this project has been a goal. Photographing this project internationally in the future is also a goal.

 The money requested would pay for airfare, paying for a project coordinator in Montana, hotel and transportation, food, post-production work, making prints, purchasing frames and finally paying for shipping of the final exhibition to the gallery in June.  I am requesting $4000 to accomplish this.

BAG is photographic installation exploring the duality between the way people characterize themselves in public and the private contents of their handbags. This is depicted by a photograph of the subject against a neutral background, in their everyday clothes, with their bag, purse, briefcase or any other container they carry on a daily basis.  The portrait of their public face is juxtaposed with the person’s more private self, represented by the actual contents of their bag.  BAG allows the viewer a glimpse into the private world of another individual, revealing aspects of this person’s organizational habits, vanities, occupations and preoccupations. This is a personal and voyeuristic look at the possessions a person carries in their bag, which has been gifted to the viewer by the subject as a willing participant.

It is the tension between the person and what they are attached to that constitutes the main point of interest in BAG. What do people choose to hold onto? What are the materials they feel they need to carry around with them? What is the correlation between how the subjects choose to portray themselves in the world, and the story that is conveyed to us by their intimate objects? Furthermore, what is the story of the objects themselves? Some are sentimental, materially valuable, some are part of a current of shared objects that pass unwittingly from person to person--—pens, flyers, elastic bands. How many things are in our bag now that we are unaware of, that have been passed to us and that we will pass on, never cognizant of when they appeared and disappeared from our lives? What are the objects in people’s bags that they are sufficiently attached to in the present to physically carry with them, but will be lost or unaccounted for in a few months time?

 BAG consists of a series of large-scale portraits taken in Philadelphia, Los Angeles and New York and Urbana, IL. Each portrait contains three separate elements.

Element 1: A photograph of the subject with their bag/purse/knapsack/briefcase.  This image will exhibit how the subject chooses to normally present him or herself to the outside world, holding their bag paired with a photograph of the contents of the bag laid out as the subject chooses his or her contents to be seen. Prints are 20x30”.

Element 2:  The actual contents of their bag/purse/knapsack/briefcase gifted to us by the subject, displayed in a clear plastic bag.

Element 3: A booklet listing all of the contents of everyone who participated in the project. The idea is that the viewer will locate the list in the booklet and find the objects in the photograph or in the plastic bag.

I am interested in portraits across age, socio-economic, gender, and race lines. I am interested in why people carry what they carry and how that changes among different populations, how objects are unwittingly passed between people; float in and out of people’s bag and of their lives. This project takes an anthropological and sociological approach to the notion of exploring peoples attachments and habits, as signified by the microcosm of what is in their BAG.

 Camille Thoman conceived of the concept for BAG and Ellie Brown is the photographer/visual artist.

http://elliebrown.com/section/94108_BAG.html