This photograph by Daido Moriyama together with another simple one of a child on a road drawing with chalk, provided the initial inspiration for the editorial. At the beginning of the Daido and Klein exhibition, I was finding it difficult to fully appreciate and pull inspiration from William Klein’s photographs, with the exception of two photographs; again simple shots, of a small boy either jumping or about to catch something from above in the first one, and in the second he appears to be pretending to fly with his arms outstretched. These photos were blurred, giving a strong sense of composition, which is also emphasised by the absence of colour. So from the very beginning of the exhibition I was particularly interested by the photographs of children, which made me think of the obliviousness and safety of my childhood.
For some time now the theme of warped childhood memories and dreams have kept on cropping up and I’ve wanted to do a project based on it.
I was more inspired by Daido’s photographs which were less fashion based. The image of the child on the road with a truck on the road particularly interested me - it made me wonder why the child was on the road drawing, whether the truck was approaching or had gone already, and who was this child. The aesthetics of the picture aren’t very exciting, instead it’s the circumstances, and bizarreness of it that stood out to me.
The image above also pulled me in because I had to look at it for a second time to understand what was going on. The picture is simple but at the same time it doesn’t actually have a lot of information that makes sense to me. It seems to give off a strong impression of a dream, something surreal; what looks like a wooden floor appears to be on the celing and the figure looks as if it’s floating or lying down. There’s a fantastical quality, an absurdness about it almost like a childhood fable or memories that don’t make sense.
