EVALUATION

My final outcome uncovers the travelling influences from the underground cultures, not only across the world but through generations. I have used three photographic collages to represent this movement of fashion and culture. The first collage is a collection of images taken by Jamel Shabazz, a street photographer based in 1980's Brooklyn, New York. His photographs highlight the distinctive fashion that mixed designer with sportswear of the youths in that era. The second collage is another collections of film photographs, however this time they are from the 1980s Lewisham, London. The majority of these images are of my family members and close friends of my mother's yet despite travelling 3465 miles, the influences in fashion have many similarities to that of what Jamel Shabazz captured, highlighting the international movement of the subcultures. The final collage is a group of images from 2013 Lewisham, London. Once again the similarities are rife, not only from the London collage but going all the way back to Brooklyn. This highlights the generational travel of this tiny fashion and culture.

One iconic brand that flowed through all three collages and had one of the strongest influences within the movement is Adidas. For this reason I decided the most relevant way to display the collages was to print them onto Adidas branded t-shirts. This helps the viewer to make the connection to fashion and look deeper into the collages to notice the brands and statement pieces that had travelled through time and age. From the sheepskin coat, buckets hats and shell toe trainers to the gold chains, oversized glasses and high waisted jeans.

To show the relevance of the collages to the youth cultures of today to a further extent, I created three very intricate stencils of my own personal street photography which dives into the raw fashion and influences of the urban subcultures of today. By hanging these stencils in front of the t-shirts it gives the viewer the chance to physically look into the subjects of the stencil and see their influences and inspirations shining through in bold colours.

I tried to keep the materials I used as relevant as possible to the subculture I was looking at. By using Adidas T-shirts the iconic branding and focus on fashion is kept alive. The transfers add a retro look to the T-shirts as they loose a bit of colour when heated and gain a yellow hue which I feel is very effective and relevant. I focused highly on the stencilling technique as stencils are something that is used a lot in graffiti and street art, which is a big part of the Hip Hop culture. On top of that, by having control over what I cut out in the stencil gives me the power to outline the iconic brands within the image and help the viewer to focus on the statement garments within the image.

What I found the most challenging was trying to get a high quality finish on the T-shirts. As my plan to get them professionally printed fell through I had to compromise and try and do my best with the facilities I had at home. Because of this the transfers had to be cut in half and printed in two pieces resulting in a slight line in the middle of each collage. On top of that, I had to use an iron to heat the transfer paper meaning it was hard to disperse even heat at the right temperature resulting in cracking and some blurring. The most physically challenging aspect of the piece was the stencilling. As I chose to use quite thick paper/card I had to add a bit more pressure when cutting with the scalpel, this tired my wrist out a lot quicker than usual and blunted the scalpels a lot quicker. If I were to improve the finish of my piece I would use dye sublimation technique to transfer the collages onto the t-shirts instead as it is more professional and permanent, it also leaves less room for mistakes, cracking and blurring.

What I enjoyed most about this project was working with real people and finding out about real influences that have travelled, not only through time but also through the generations within my own family. Not only did I discover a lot about other people and their background, but I learnt a lot about myself and discovered a lot of similarities between me and my parents' influences from when they were my age. This has definitely inspired me to work with real people and create beauty by exposing natural patterns within every day life in my future projects.