[SEM2] Site Week 5 02/14/2022

Some updates on the project and where I’m at:

I’m sending out 5 rolls of motion picture films to a photo lab specialized in processing those type of films on Monday since the c41 machine that the school has can’t develop motion picture films. Hopefully I will receive the negatives in a week or so so that I can then start scanning and putting them together. Thankfully, I’ve received two my test rolls of film negatives last week which I will scan on Monday and I will also dropping off 3 more rolls to get developed at the school lab on Monday as well. It’s getting there.

Some more information based on my research on the project itself:

Although I agree with Augé’s general proposition that non-place is an experience of people “passing through” to more meaningful destinations, where history itself “is on our heels, following us like our shadows, like death,” I want to frame my own interpretation of non-place from a photographic perspective. When Augé normally refers representations of contemporary infrastructures, and their interior spaces, I also want to pay more attention to the fragmented vacant spaces that these structures both create and often hide. In this sense, I want to do a compare and contract to with those cinematic spatial case-studies referenced by Augé and spaces that have been created inadvertently, emerging as the spatial detritus of more valued developments in my local urban landscape. As a result, I seek to redefine non-place (negative) in relation to place (positive), and the critical notions attached to personal and collective identity, the relational, and historical.

This project will consist photos of “positive places” (landscapes embedded in natural myths and narratives, architectures built with meaning and cultural identity) and “negative” non-places (street photos, urban spaces, and portraits that are captured inadvertently). I think the action of walking around on the street and taking street photographs has the potential to reveal a less prescriptive apprehension of non-place. Each step coincides with the ironic reference to the potential “click” of the camera shutter. And using analogue camera and film roles to document this process of revisiting well-known landmarks and discovering unexplored non-places adds ax extra layer of identity, authenticity, and history.