Kids

The main idea of this work is de-contextualizing the subject from its environment. And by the means of this I explored the possible occurrence of a new meaning. This way allows to see different perspectives in the things we know. Photography as a medium has a certain level of trust. This makes manipulation of perception possible. In this project I play with ambiguous feelings, questioning emotions and associations of the viewer. Depicting an uncontrolled stream of emotions in a teenager, caused by a particular situation which is unrelated to the eventual reaction, I evoke the same uncontrolled response in the viewer, thus creating a private dialogue between image and the audience. Isolating the subject from its natural surroundings also appeals to the question of privacy. Photographing teenagers on the street, using their portraits, manipulating the visual language and creating a new meaning, pose the question of intervention into personal space. The visual language of these photographs refers to propaganda posters used extensively in 1920-30’s by the Soviet authorities and constructivists. They used the same kind of feeling as I wanted to achieve and employed an individual as a representation for a phenomenon, rather than its personal qualities, and by this erased its individuality and generated a more common image. This project became a part of the exhibition Teenage magazines held in FOAM Amsterdam in 2011 and resulted in to a publication.