CULTURE PROJECT Development
For this stage I unfortunately didn't document everything but I do have a few work in progress images. The process honestly went by incredibly fast for me though.
I had started out trying to emulate a frankenstein poster and struggled to find an image of jk rowling, so I had to edit one myself to give it more of a Holywood lighting. I also looked at a lot of images of electroshock therapy to try and fit in the image. When doing this, it really felt like the poster was getting muddied and less clear. I had tried to maybe even incorporate images from the day the Supreme Court had passed the law on gender identity as this was fresh information as I was working on this, and it was incredibly relevant. But I was really struggling to cut them out correctly, I also just couldn't get the feeling of the poster to work it was just all over the place, and I felt stuck.
This was the last save i had of this progress, and it just felt ugly and terrible without a clear message. I'm sure it could have been developed further, but I decided to take a step back and look at what interested me originally as I got too focused on one aspect of what drew me to this idea.
I also spoke to a friend about the project and the ideas I had. They helped me sift through my thoughts of what I wanted from this image. We agreed that the 'evil people' in the image kinda made it less appealing and not about the community but rather ended up being more about the forces against the community and that if anything we need to spending less focus on them and focus more on the community itself and celebrate it.
Sophie Xeon, trans woman from Glasgow who passed, is a pillar in the trans community across the world. She had a profound influence on the music industry that is now only being totally expanded on and explored by other artists like her good friend Charlie xcx, whom she worked with on many projects. So, i wanted to capture her importance to me and the community in this image. I really wanted to communicate the idea of freedom, beauty, femininity with her. I also really wanted to just get the idea of blooming and transitioning as a beautiful process regardless if you medically transition, if you 'pass' asceticly or not as these things shouldn't matter to society as a whole just to people as individuals and what they want for themselves not what others want for us.
This was the end template I ended up with before I messed around too much with the colour of the image as I still felt very visually impressed with the screen prints i had saw online but it wasn't a process I had access to so I decided to get inspired by it instead.
On the top, we have Sophie front and centre around moons and doves. To me, they represent her feminity, power, and how free she really looked to me.
The message government will never define gender in response to the Supreme courts ruling, I've never really been great at tag lines, but I wanted text and was happy with this.
On the bottom, we have an image of someone with top surgery that I got online as a royalty free image as I didn't want to just take anyone's image online and use it for my poster. It felt like the most ethical thing I could do for an image as vulnerable as this second to getting permission from a trans masc person who has had top surgery for a similar photo but I think this is effective enough. Next to them we have Zephyranthes, they are there to represent rebirth and new beginnings. I wanted something that wasn't over done like a phenix or a butterfly but to carry similar meanings. And on the bottom probably the imagery I'm least big on being the bridge. To me I've put this here to represent the journey on transitioning and getting to the next stage in life.
Here is the final image, the previous one I flattened to make it a single thing and opened a new page on Photoshop. From here i edited it with the camera RAW filter to make the image B&W but also to mess with the contrast a bit. I then added a smart filter to give it that dotty texture you might get from a printer and put a solid pink layer over the top of the image. The final stage to give it more of a tactile feeling I found a photocopy texture online and messed with the transparency of it until it felt natural over the image.
