Zed Nelson

I also looked closely into Zed Nelson's work on his 'Love Me' project:

i found his work highly interesting as it was based on being aware of the global obsession with beauty.His 'Love Me' project was based on how far people go to look beautiful, and more importantly, younger. His work range from some shocking images of tummy tuck operations and fat that has been removed from surgery in a jar, to images of breast implants and the consequences to taking steroids to which is 'Love Me' project has been nominated for 2011 Deautsche Borse Photography Prize. Zed Nelson currently lives in London and his work has been published and exhibited worldwide. He gained recognition and major awards as a documentary photographer working in some of the most troubled areas of the world. Nelson has increasingly turned his focus on Western Society, adopting and increasingly conceptual approach to reflect on contemporary social issues. The two most famous projects that Zed Nelson has created was his 'Gun Nation' and 'Love Me' projects. 'Gun Nation reflects on America's deadly love affair with the gun as for 'Love me' reflects on the cultural and commercial forces that drive a global obsession with youth and beauty. Her has also been awarded First Prize in 2010 Picture of the Year (POY) competition in the USA for 'Love Me', Judges Special Recognition for the Best Photography Book for Love me, third Prize for 2010 World Press photo competition, first prize for Picture of the Year competition, won the Alfred Eisensteadth Award and many more.

I found his work incredibly eye-opening and shocking to view as he wanted to illustrate his work on the issue of the extent that people to go beauty. Zed Nelson illustrated this series of images because he wanted his work to "reflect on the cultural and commercial forces that drive the global obsession with youth and beauty". To create this series of images Zed Nelson went to the effort to visit 18 different countries over 5 years across 5 continents to which he photographed cosmetic surgeons, beauty queens and body builders next to original and ordinary teenagers, housewives and businessmen. He varied his work from images of spray tanning to more eye-opening images of tummy tuck operations. One image I remember was a beauty queen contest image, it was an image of a 47 year old female prisoner who was originally a tour-guide however was imprisoned for 4 years for drug smuggling in Rio, Brazil. What was the most shocking factor of this was that after all the events this woman had been through her life, beauty was still highly important to her. One factor I noticed to why people strive for beauty is because they feel they have to compete with the younger generation such as one of Zed Nelson's work of a 40 year old man having a chin and abdominal operation of "I am competing with men 20 years younger than me". Zed Nelson's intentions is to show that beauty is not as 'beautiful' as it seems to which is why he has captured images of grousom surgery and the harsh realty as he captures an image during a tummy tuck operations.

His Projects throughout the years have granted him many nominations and awards in the past as Zed Nelsons 'Love Me' project has been nominated for the 2011 Deautsche Borse Photography Prize. He currently lives in London and his work has been published and exhibited worldwide. He gained recognition and major awards as a documentary photographer working in some of the most troubled areas of the world as well as he has increasingly turned his focus on Western society, adopting and increasingly conceptual approach to reflect on contemporary social issues.Two of his most famous projects of his are probably 'Love Me' and 'Gun Nation'. 'Gun Nation' is a disturbing reflection on America's deadly love affair with the gun as for 'Love Me' reflects on the cultural and commercial forces that drive a global obsession with youth and beauty. Zed Nelson has been awards for many prizes and nominations since, he has been:

• awarded first Prize in 2010 Picture of the Year (POY) competition in the USA, for 'Love Me'
• Judges Special recognition for Best Photography Book for 'Love Me'.
• Third Prize in 2010 World Press photo competition.
• First Prize for Picture of the Year (POY) and First Prize for the Aldred Eisenteadth Award.

As well as many more. 

Helen Lyon

I started to get interested in the work of Helen Lyon, especially her series of work called 'I'm not here to be a Muse'. I first saw the work of Helen Lyon in a Silvershot magazine and I felt that her work fitted quite well with the theme of obsession with beauty. Although One piece of work I found interesting was two modelling images one with a caption of "no tits, no cigarette, no talent", some of her mixed media work seem quite bold and harsh which is why i felt that this was a great piece of work to be inspired by as it reflects on the

harshness that beauty has on people. This side of the obsession with beauty could also allow me to branch off to the modelling side of beauty, as this would give me many opportunities to branch out my work and explore different experiences with the different obsessions with beauty whether it is in everyday life, the professional image or within the people who create the obsession.

Helen Lyon's photograph's of women are highly intriguing and fascinating. They are small scale, muted colors and incongruous focus enables Lyon to portray a glimpsed intimacy.They are ethereal and glamorous pieces of work as they are the image of paired down antique luxury. Helen Lyon worked as a fashion photographer for many leading style magazine's including Harper's

Bazaar and her work has appeared in such titles as Vanity Fair. Lyon's mixed media are hand printed onto water color paper in editions of only 5. The images take her experience of fashion photography to another step, creating unsettling yet beautiful images that she has worked into with paints and inks and developing a story beyond the initial image. Their diminutive scale makes them highly intimate and very personal glimpses into the female psyche. Making the images appear special and highly intimate.Some people may find her work rather shocking yet subtle when they gain a first impression of the work as some of her pieces do gain a sharp reaction such as caption discriminating a woman as a "waste of love" however the way she portrays women can sometimes be alluring. The sharp grey-scale tones in some of her work to me is what gives her work the edge, if her work was to appear in color i feel that the images and the women them self would not appear so strong as they do in the black and white setting. Although the combination of images with lack of captions and images that have been what appears to be 'hand-written' on is quite intriguing, I do feel that maybe some of her images such as the two images above would of probably been made stronger by adding text that can make the viewer think twice about the photographs. Perhaps as the women appear so strong and independent, adding a written caption that makes them appear otherwise, makes them appear weak and maybe vulnerable would add to the images allure.

Obsession with Aging

I started to look into what is people's obsession with aging because for someone to want to create a way to live on forever their must be a want for it. We see it in society today with many adverts and posters advertising anti-wrinkle cream, botox, plastic surgery. Its not just an obsession with not aging, but an obsession with being perfect, but what is perfect? We see so many campaigns for beauty and fashion and the 'perfect look' which encourages people to try and be as perfect as they can be and in affect puts a lot of pressure on people.

The factor is that most of the time it is not us who want to be thinner, more fashionable, younger looking, but it's what we are made to think we should be like because of what adverts and designers throw it at us. I started making a note of all the things we get advertised to make our self look younger. For example, there

are so many different types of anti-aging skin care advertisement out their and no guarentee that they are actually working, we get told that 'miracle' creams can make you feel and look younger but the fact is they wouldn't be advertising it if there wasn't a market for these types of product. Not only that, hair dye has now not only been used so that people can change their hair colour that they were born with, but so that they can eliminate grey hairs that may make them appear older. We a bulldozered with advertisement and fashion that sometimes you don't know whether our opinion on aging is our own, or the medias.

Start of Unit 3

I've been trying to come up with ideas that I can start developing on for my Unit 3. It wasn't easy but I started thinking about the aging process. I got the idea off the television when i was watching a series of documentaries called 'Curiosity', the first episode was on whether we can live forever?

It was about how technology will soon allow us to create artificial organs and reverse the aging process by taking dead cells out of our blood so it can renew it self resulting in use never aging, treating aging like it is a disease to be cured. I thought this would be a good project to try and work around because it creates so many moral and social problems when trying to create technology for us to live forever. One main problem the majority of society would be concerned about is, what would you do if you have all the time in the world? most people live life in excitement and go to places around the world because they may never get to ever again resulting in the saying 'you only live once' which is true but what would happen if you never stopped living? would you want to travel the world and experience new experiences as much if you had all the time in the world?

Other morals it brings up is with trying to create the technology to prevent aging, people soon become 'lab subject' and many people question whether treating a human being as a lab subject to be prodded and tested on is right? not to mention if they actually managed to prevent aging, how will we control the population of the earth. Many countries such as China already have to place down laws on how many children can be born, it wouldn't make the world a better place if every country would have to result into doing this?

So as you can see I thought i would go down this road for a project because their is so many parts of it that i could branch off to and it gives me a lot more variety to work with.