This week’s activity is from Michael Christopher Brown, an American photographer represented by Magnum Photos. He has gained an international reputation, especially for his documentation of the 2011 Libyan Civil War, which was published in a monograph titled Libyan Sugar, by Twin Palms Publishers in 2016.
‘For much of my career, photography was more of a way to make money than a compulsion. I spent a lot of time communicating ideas that were not my own. Two years ago, during the Libyan Revolution, I began taking a more honest path with regards to photography. It had to do with finding a voice. An interesting exercise that anyone can do is to take one photograph per day for a week. The idea is to be focused enough to only photograph what is absolutely necessary. What are the seven pictures that not only define the week, but yourself? What if you were to die next week and these were to be the last seven pictures of your life? This exercise can be an important analysis of the self in relation to life and photography’.
The brief was take seven images, one a day, which might be considered your last.
I opted to create a mini-photo essay about my long suffering muse, going about her daily business. I also opted to use the same camera and lens, with no cropping.
I normally carry a camera everywhere, and take photographs daily, sometimes, of course, with the iPhone. This time however I pre-visualised each day’s image – in the sense of the subject matter but not the composition.
This is the result.
Day One
Day Two
Day Three
Day Four
Day Five
Day Six
Day Seven
………………………..
Fulford, Jason. 2014. The Photographer’s Playbook: 307 Assignments and Ideas. New York: Aperture.