Paragraph 1 The first series, titled “student with learning disabilities”, is more layered because subject matter lends itself to a more experimental approach. The series is about students with learning disabilities. I choose this subject because I know there are students that are scared to say anything and they feel like they are not normal like the other students. The first image I did was difficult because it’s a cyanotype project. I like how the work turned out because it helped me to express my feelings about how it must feel to be a student with a learning disability, when I see it I feel like I have a learning disability.
The second series is about my mother’s dog grooming business. My connection to this documentary work is caring about dogs, and how to handle it like a business. When you do a business with animals you need to treat it with respect, but also handle it carefully. I choose this theme because there are dogs out there on the street sometimes and they can get hurt, and its not right to leave an animal hurt on the street. I learned to observe my mom at work, and I learned that there are some dogs that are nice and some dogs that are mean. But each dog is different on how they want to be treated and how they are being raised. I use the cyanotype process to give the images a more interesting structure, and feeling. As an artist, I like to find ways to express art in many ways, and this time I wanted to try something different to express art that people can see happening even if they are blind to see it. Paragraph 2 In the students with learning disabilities series I interviewed my subjects to find out what helps them learn the subject that they are learning And what makes things confusing for them to understand. I used the information to decide where to put the pictures in with the main person , then I combined the pictures to create students that help them learn and what is confusing to them. I used a documentary style approach to shooting the images, and tried to capture them at school in a learning environment when possible. The way I coated the paper with the chemical was very experimental, and I did that to enhance the story of how it feels to be in the mind of a student with a learning disability. The second series iupliftings more traditional, and tells the story of how I felt sitting in my mother’s dog grooming shop every day during the pandemic. It was not until later that I found out how much it meant to everyone in the class to see the dogs, and my mom during class. Many of the students didn’t turn on their cameras, so even the teacher said that it was to see the shop. I always thought of the place as a jungle of different types of dogs in one place being treated with care by a caring groomer and now I see how small things can really mean a lot to other people.