This piece was created as a final project for both my Young Adult Literature class and Media 2 class.
I wanted to examine the similarities and differences between the lives of teens/young adults across different generations. I started by interviewing my four subjects (who happen to be my Grandma, Father, Mother, and Sister, respectively) about what life was/is like as a teen and young adult. Questions ranged from "What books did you read?" to "How did you feel about the Vietnam War?", focusing on both things pertaining to their own personal lives yet also the larger context of what was happening around them. I took the answers I was given and applied them to the pieces by gathering artifacts from my subjects teen and young adult lives that pertained to the interviews. When I photographed my subjects, I wanted to almost create this time machine and compose the artifacts around the subjects in their desired space. My father, for instance, is a software engineer and spends hours upon hours in front of his computer in his study, so I posed him with his artifacts there. I had a lot of fun with this project, as someone who collects music and loves thrifting and going to places like Hunt and Gather with rooms full of old objects. It was very enjoyable to find all these objects and photographs and compose them together to show the passing of time and essentially create both a conventional and unconventional portrait of my subjects.
