To continue on with the project, I continued taking photographs and interviews of the last few participants, Allison, Heather, Maddy and Jess. Once again these images would be transformed into a grey scale format using Adobe Lightroom, with the interview questions remaining the same as those of the previous participants.
Image: Allison Harpur, (2018), pictured inside, by Sarah Elliott.
What does it mean to be a woman?
‘Being a woman means that I have the opportunity to bring these little children into my life to make it full and bright’
Images: Heather Mannion, (2018), pictured outside, by Sarah Elliott.
What is your view on feminism?
I feel like feminism is misunderstood because the media attention paints it as ‘man-hating’. You look at it and its simple but it gets so twisted and misconstrued, then you look at stuff like ‘Me Too’ and ‘Times Up’ and individuals who actually try to make a difference and they incorporate it into their life, yet it gets so twisted in the media.
I feel like feminism is misunderstood because the media attention paints it as ‘man-hating’. You look at it and its simple but it gets so twisted and misconstrued, then you look at stuff like ‘Me Too’ and ‘Times Up’ and individuals who actually try to make a difference and they incorporate it into their life, yet it gets so twisted in the media.
Images: Maddison Evans, (2018), pictured outside, by Sarah Elliott.
If you could tell your younger self anything what would it be?
'Don’t compare yourself to others, I feel like growing up, especially towards the end of school, watching everyone grow and change you think that you should be the same as them, but leaving school and going to university and going to work you see that everyone is really different and you question why you ever wanted to be the same'
'Don’t compare yourself to others, I feel like growing up, especially towards the end of school, watching everyone grow and change you think that you should be the same as them, but leaving school and going to university and going to work you see that everyone is really different and you question why you ever wanted to be the same'
Images: Jessica Reefman, (2018), pictured indoors, by Sarah Elliott.
What is your view on feminism?
‘I think feminism is incredibly important, I am frustrated that it has been twisted by people who take it out of context, they turn it into something that it isn't. People that use feminism to push an ‘hate all men’ agenda are not feminism. I think feminism is incredibly important for everyone, not just for women, not just for men, but for everyone.’
‘I think feminism is incredibly important, I am frustrated that it has been twisted by people who take it out of context, they turn it into something that it isn't. People that use feminism to push an ‘hate all men’ agenda are not feminism. I think feminism is incredibly important for everyone, not just for women, not just for men, but for everyone.’
With Jessica being the final participant to take images of, it was time to compile all images and interviews into the InDesign file which already contained the previous research done on female activism, as well as the professional images and the divider designs. This was to be a quick and easy process as the layout had already been prepared and all that was left to do was to insert the images and interviews into place. Although when gathering direct sentences and quotes from the interviews, I found it was best to listen to the audio recording and type word for word what the interviewee was saying onto a word document, so that I may pick up any grammatical errors and mistakes (although some did slip through) and to minimise clutter on the InDesign file.
Images: Screenshots of the final editing of La Feminite using Adobe Illustrator
Once the InDesign file of the book was complete, I converted the file into a PDF format so that it would be easier for the printers to use when creating the final production of the book. Once converted, I went into the city to have the book ordered and printed by Dark Star Digital, in Surry Hills. With the entire process only taking 3 hours, the book was ready to go by Thursday. With black binding tape holding the pages in place, as there were too many pages for it too be stapled into place, and Eco-friendly 120gsm premium print paper being used for the final production, the book was finally complete and all that was left was to take my final professional images.
Image: Final front cover and print of La Feminite
I decided to take the images in a natural and soft light as that is how I took the images of the different girls and women within the book, so I wanted to keep a consistent aesthetic and technique. It was a small and simple set up with a wooden coffee table pushed up against a window for natural lighting acting as the base, and a step stool and my own hands acting as the tripod.
Supplementary Component
After completing the book I felt compelled to create a supplementary component of prints that could potentially be used or built on for the final exhibition. For these print's, I liked the idea of using the grey scale images of the participants once again while using the words from one of the quotes across the images. I decided to use images of the participants that were not in the book, particularly images of them smiling.
Images: Jessica Reefman, Heather Mannion, Maddison Evans, Neive Elliott, Nempha Ani & Stephanie Nott, (2018), pictured smiling, taken by Sarah Elliott
I chose the quote 'Well-behaved women seldom make history' to place on top of these images as it creates a nice yet subtle contrast between the message the quote is indicating and the smiling faces of the young, 'ill-behaved', women.
Images: Supplementary component print out design
Using the font Microsoft Yi Biati, I placed singular words in the very centre of the image with the word covering the subjects face in majority of the photos. This allowed for the attention to be equally shared between the image and the quote, rather than to draw attention to one more than the other. It is in a straight and bold text as it is a bold slogan activist statement. These prints were then printed on A4 premium print paper for the purpose of presentation although I am hoping to potentially blow them up in A3 professional print posters with, hopefully, a further developed typographic design.