Shopping List - Idea Four

In this project, I will capture a family-friend’s interest in genealogy. Kim has been interested in discovering her family history for many years, and travels across the country to record offices to discover more about her heritage; this summer she took a trip to Ireland by herself to follow up some leads on her research. The idea for this project was based upon her involvement in my diptychs summer project for year two, as it was about hobbies. Genealogy has also become very popular over the past few years, with TV shows such as “Who Do You Think You Are?” becoming a primetime fixture on the BBC, and TV commercials for genealogy websites quite commonplace.

For this project, I will be interviewing Kim about how she got into genealogy and her interest in it, what she has found, and her plans for the future. I will then take this information and it will help to form either a multimedia video piece, or a photo-essay with accompanying text based upon the interview. Shots may include her collection of family artefacts – such as photographs, documents, family trees, and other objects, observational portraits of Kim researching at home or at a records office.

The equipment I will use includes a Tascam for interview recording, either a Nikon full-frame camera or maybe a medium format analogue camera, a range of lenses, a tripod, and Adobe software (either Premiere Pro for a multimedia piece, or Photoshop for still images). Depending on whether I decide to do the photo-essay, I may shoot images with the medium format. I will research printing companies that can print newspaper-style booklets for the final presentation of the photo-essay, if I do decide to go down that route with this project. 

This project may be ideal for the second semester, and could be a good project to display in exhibition. I may write a photo-essay regardless if I do display this project in exhibition, as mass-produced copies could be available for visitors to the gallery space to take away if they desire.