C&N Assignment 3 – Reaction to diary and ideas

Diary Reaction

As I have said before I currently I live in Pattaya, Thailand where I am working part-time as a Scuba Instructor, however, my fiancée Anastasya is still living and working in Hong Kong – where we met. This means from the past 8 months we have been in the torture that is a long-distance relationship. With our only contact me facetime calls and short holidays.

Anastasya was fully supportive of my move to Thailand away from Hong Kong, because I wanted to pursue a long-standing ambition to teach Scuba, which wouldn’t have been possible in Hong Kong, I was getting disillusioned with my job as an ESL teacher because I was finding the kids we under a lot of pressure a very young age and the cost of living in Hong Kong is very high. And Anastasya had around 18 months remaining on her contract as a Nanny.

What has this to do with self-portraits? When I started my diary, I was looking forward to Anastasya’s upcoming holiday in Thailand. I was also making diary notes throughout the holiday right through to me accompanying here back to Hong Kong and the overwhelming theme of the entries is how much I enjoy her company, how much I will miss her and how much she has come part of my life. Therefore, it seemed obvious that she or her influence needed to be reflected in this project

Ideas

Despite what my thoughts were on my diary entries my creative ideas were poor I listed out ideas for self-portraits which just seemed hackneyed e.g.

Tryptic of me as a diver, photographer, and Teacher ( add a 4^th to show my former life as a banker/office worker; is this a quadtic?)
Photo’s showing that show the mundane side of life – just because I live I Thailand we I still go to the supermarket and watch TV etc.
A day in my life at work – ruled this out as it would disturb paying customers and most importantly could compromise safety on dives and dive boat.

I think starting thing about some of the photographers I had studied previously, Elina Brotherus, Francesca Woodman etc and this brought me to the theme of loneliness and isolation. Perhaps that is what I am feeling and experiencing, although this seems more of a theme for photographing the unseen and spent some time reflecting on this and discussed the idea with Anastasya and she rather (un)delicately pointed out that while I may be separated from loved her (and other friends) I am far from lonely or isolated. We speak a minimum of twice a day on the phone the at least once via Facetime, I am in constant contact with friends around the globe with WhatsApp and messenger and I work in a job I love with great colleagues 3 or so times a week – I am far from lonely nor am I isolated.

Then it struck me – Anastasya is part of me a big part of me, the reason I am here in Thailand, emotionally supporting everything I do so that we can start a life a (married) couple soon – I need to put myself into the picture through her.