Experimenting with fragmentation
Samin Ahmadzadeh:
Samin was born and raised surrounded by a large Iranian family. This impacted his work greatly as he uses collages to present images of his family, new and old, to give a sort of Deja vu effect and to show the differing ways of how identity is affected by them. His inspiration to use this technique and of the context behind it is his father. This is because his father went to a UK boarding school as a child, which meant that he was away from his family and his Iranian heritage for a lot of his upbringing. Being surrounded by British children and upper-class children had a massive impact on his identity and created some sort of split between his Iranian identity and his British identity. Samin expresses that his identity is not split but just different as he strips images from his father's Eastern and Western upbringing and then pieces them together to include parts of each other.
This image consists of two images taken of Samin's family, one older and one newer. Luckily for Samin, he comes from a family of photographers, meaning that he has access to photo albums from generations of his family. As you can see, both images are of multiple family members.
This part of the image really caught my eye as both children are in similar places looking in the same direction years apart. These images being completely unplanned, making the expression of Deja vu is clear in this image. This demonstrates the theme of identity and it being passed down through generations as two children look intrigued towards another member of their family.
Samin created this piece in the late 2010s as part of an exhibit in Nottingham Museum titled "Reportrait". He claims to have always been influenced by shapes and geometry and took a geometry course in Iran in 2015. He mentions in an interview that he has 'always been fascinated by the geometrical factors used in the Iranian architecture and Islamic art. As an Iranian, I have been surrounded by a variety of these patterns in my daily life but going on the course helped me understand the science and the complexity of the details behind it all.' This influenced his work her as he depicts every image inside a circle. He believes that a circle gives a sense of unity and wholeness which is what his work demonstrates, a unity of different identities of families. I also like how the colours flow in a blend from one side of the piece to the other.
Output:
These are the two images I am using in my output. I have chosen these two as I think the contrast of dark and light will make the use of fragmentation less subtle. My thought process with these images is that my dog is very adventurous and loves big walks. Using these two images, I feel like it's looking into her mind of what she is dreaming she is doing. I am thinking of cutting them into strips lengthways and sticking them together.
These were my final results. I think it worked out quite well regarding the fact that I cannot cut a straight line and that my darker image came out darker than intended. I really like the contrast and really pleased with how it came together. I think if I was ever to do it again, I would make the smarter decision to only cut up one image and stick it to the other instead of what I did as it was much more time consuming.
