The other day I shot a series of photographs of my good friend Luke. (Find the full shoot here). The two of us drove down to Winterton on Sea, Norfolk, on a brisk November evening and spent about two hours on the beach shooting, shivering and doing our best to stave off hypothermia. I was using Portra 120 in my trusty Praktica L2, with my ancient Pentax 28mm. Processing was done by The Film Safe, a small lab out of Southhampton. I side with them purely because they're consistently the cheapest competent-option on the market.
With the details out of the way I wanted to note some of my thoughts towards the shoot and my inspirations therein.
Me and Luke are two blokes in our early 20s, we both have university degrees and come from relative middle-classdom. After graduating this past summer, we both decided to stick around in Norwich, our University town, and work until life began to take more of a defined shape/direction. I can only speak for myself here, but the past few months have felt like my first proper taste of adult life. You work, you earn money, you buy food and pay rent, the normal 9-5 blah, blah, blah. A completely new experience, I have never been without the insulation of full time education before in my life.
Look at me, posing adulthood like its some kind of profound trial of work ethic; like its all just a test to see if my sheltered experience of cushy student finance loans and generous parents can withstand the scrutiny of the big-boy world. I hate to sound like that and if I do, I'm sorry. Actually, I'm not. I can only speak to my experience. At the same time, I admit I am self concious of how it comes off, (as you can probably tell). I'm not sorry but I am also quite sorry at the same time. I have always hated the idea that I might come off as niave regarding anything. This is of course without understanding that in order to not be niave you are first required to be it. Anyway, back to the 9-5, adult life, etc. Talking to Luke in the pub, we both agreed that times had been tough recently, nothing mega, we just both felt like we were drowning in work and lacked the free-time we were used to having, to step outside of it all and take a breath.
True to my middle-class guilt complex, this conversation got my mental cogs whirring. When is it actually valid to feel overwhelmed with work and the general taxing nature of professional/adult life? For myself, in the lead up to this question, I can hardly say that I've been rewriting productivity records within my work. True I have taken on more hours to help looking at my current account become bareable, but I have hardly been Stakhanov. I can hardly claim to have had it harder than most of my colleagues. For instance, they have families to feed, mortgages to pay and more responsibilities in general. They turn up to work six days a week, week after week without so much as a complaint. My strung-out, stessed-fillied struggle is their everyday reality. So why should I feel overwhelmed? Surely I'm just being melodramatic. That's what I tell myself I'm being.
So I planned this shoot to help acknowledge this dilemna. I wanted to be conciously ham-fisted about the way in which the photographs talked about stress and struggling with things. Lets be in the sea, with the massive expanse of the ocean and horizon beyond darwfing the subject. Lets really hammer home the idea of feeling small, overwhelmed and up to one's neck in pressure/costs/responsibilities/fatigue, etc. Lets EVEN have a coping mechanism in there and always to hand, (Luke's cigarette) to further scream woe is me in these photographs.
"melodrama" /ˈmɛləˌdrɑːmə/ noun 1. a sensational dramatic piece with exaggerated characters and exciting events intended to appeal to the emotions.
Melodrama is exaggeration mixed with emotion. The photographs me and Luke made are certainly that. I wanted them to be. The idea of the subject fully clothed, smoking a cigarette in the sea is of course over the top, it's an over the top premise in response to what I self depreciatingly deem an over the top sense of suffocation on my part. I am not drowning in adult life, how could I be? Thousands have it harder than me. I just think I'm drowning because I don't know true struggle, I'm being melodramatic. As karma would have it, I am usually the first person to deem the actions or words of others melodramatic. If I saw the photographs from this shoot and hadn't myself taken them I'd certainly had sniffed and called them over the top. They are, but with a purpose. Being concious in the creation of visual melodrama, I wanted these photographs to A) serve as a record of the time in my life when I thought I was dealing with adult life proper, but in actual fact was being niave and slightly melodramatic. And B) as an excuse to witter about the decision between deeming onself melodramatic or valid at times of stress.
When is it valid to struggle? Is it okay to feel sorry for myself whenever it feels natural? Is this called being too easy on oneself? Do certain occasions call for a stiff upper-lip and a reminder that other people are working harder, feeling more fatigued and have far more worries than us? These are dilemnas I think about a lot, I like to think the photographs and their rationale was a good exercise for me in getting these mental arguments I have with myself out there.