Real Life Murder Mysteries

In 2009, images were produced from the archives of the Dart award winning newspaper project. These poignant still images focused on the witnesses and victims of a crime. The photographs  were taken by photojournalists who were  exploring and relating images to news stories of offence  which occurred in their own community. They captured the emotional time after the incident through painful and realistic shots.

This journalistic project influenced me to investigate the crime within my home city of Galway, putting the spotlight on murders. Over the past century, Galway has created an illusion of a quiet, peaceful and flawless city. However, under the roots of anything there is always the fascinating truth. There have been some terrifying and gruesome murders to pass through this city over the past couple of decades, which has not harmed Galway’s ideal reputation at all. Galway city looks like a guiltless and harmless city but everyday thousands of feet trample through the cobbled city streets not knowing the history of the granite and tar they walk upon. My job was to capture the emotional and mysterious side of the city. A side where known unlawful deaths have occurred. I scoured through the archive of online newspapers and had a little knowledge of murders committed. During my research local people provided me with different stories. My images grasp the area where the unfortunate and sad incidents occurred or where deceased was found. In relation to the theme ‘stories’, nobody knows the real occurrences that happened that day or night.  These pictures represent and illustrate the obscurity of the anonymous stories that flood our everyday streets. People can only guess and use there imagination on what happened at that time but nobody knows the true story; only a) the victim and b) the murderer.

 

  

 

Photography Project

“A successful person is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks that others throw at     him or her.” – David Brinkley. 

         The world around me is full of emotional reactions; people’s reactions to situations but most importantly to each other.  My life consists of receiving different emotions and feelings. These reactions significantly affect my mood and self esteem on a daily basis. I captured images of people close to me and asked them to portray the emotion that they felt towards me at that current time. These images were taken during normal conversation therefore the expressions and emotions are completely natural. Invading their own comfortable personal space led the majority to be uncomfortable and annoyed. It is important to know that these reactions and feelings towards me have shaped me to become the person that I am today.

*Click to enlarge*

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It's Semester 2 and the assignments are in and piling up every minute. Photography is due on Thursday and by God was that topic hard to dissect - ‘The world you inhabit, the world around you.’ Because of the broad topic there are oodles of interpretations that could have been explored. Obviously enough this made it much harder to narrow down. 

The world I live in is full of people’s interaction and communication with each other, so, I decided to take images on people’s reaction to me – from my view. This is my uncle Frank – he’s mad as a bag of spiders and clearly not pleased. I didn’t use this image for the project because, well, it doesn’t relate to it (basically, it was a random photo I took that I love and don’t want to lose).

DCU Fashion Show

Entry for the DCU Fashion Show 2010 poster competition:

Academic vs. Expression

So, I'm just waiting for my dinner (smells gorgeous btw) and I've staring thinking about Art as a subject in Leaving Cert.

Image from:http://bit.ly/81ItJI

It’s been 2 years since I’ve been in secondary school and unfortunately, I found the Art class to be dull, frustrating and forceful in the classroom. Art shouldn’t be about sitting down at a desk for a half an hour and being told exactly what to do and what materials you have to use. It’s a form of expression and I don’t think my art teachers or the programme gave us that opportunity to express ourselves. I think that fact that I struggled that was fairly obvious to them and caused a lot of clashing.

With art you can’t plan. Saying, “right, tomorrow at 5pm I am going to do a watercolour painting of a bowl of fruit” (first, thing that came into my head) for me anyways, is just not possible. On occasion, I might be sitting down watching TV and suddenly get the urge to paint or sketch. You don’t go to art, art comes to you. People’s moods obviously effect the level and type of art when producing it and that’s something that was completely forgotten about or even ignored in the classroom. It was such and still is a shame. There were people with incredible talent in my class and they didn’t have the freedom to do what the want. Yes, materials in the classroom were second to none, along with talent and guidance of the teachers, but the most important element is emotion which lacked incredibly.

As it’s fairly obvious, I’m interested in creating art, however, a very important aspect of art is to learn the history and development of it through the years. This is something that disappointed me greatly throughout my two years in the Leaving Cert cycle. A half an hour a week for two academic years seemed almost enough to understand and expand the knowledge and influence of art. Unfortunately, I was very wrong. I was gasping for information on artists from Di Vinci to Braque to Hone. The window of information that was available to us was astonishing but never explored. I was unimpressed that I never got to experience the art from 1400’s onwards unless I studied it without any guidance. The prospect of learning about Modern Art and the ideas behind it were so appealing. This was not due to the teaching level of my teachers but I have found other students from different schools complaining of the same issue. There seems to be an attitude of ‘learn what is expected the exam and leave it at that’. What happened to making learning fun?! (Leaving Certs cringing over that sentence all over the country)

Newgrange: Tomb or more?

Image from: http://bit.ly/8nNzpX

The idea of learning about art and it’s experiences was thrown out the window and became strict regurgitation of facts and figures like something out of a Biology book. Shouldn’t the art course be based on your own thoughts and feelings, whether you liked or disliked the painting/sculpture along with the fundamentals of the work? I expected it to be like this and not a word by word account of Newgrange. Wouldn’t it have been far more interesting to ,yes learn the dimensions and reasons behind Newgrange, but also adding our own creative touch by commenting and giving our own theories about the designs and grooves on the stones circling and inside the tomb? This would have given student the opportunity to think for themselves and really study the tomb further without being bored to death by looking at a book for 4 hours. I think students get enough from the other 6 subjects they study. Don’t get me wrong, it is important to learn the facts and figures of different works, however, a whole course does not need to focus on this point but rather explore the meaning behind the painting.

This would have been the perfect opportunity to get students ready for their university education if they were to push on to that level. In university, especially in my course Communications, you learn how to research the facts and figures while adding your own flare to assignments and give your own theory attachment to others who have excelled in the subject before you. This would have made the Leaving Cert far more interesting while giving the student the knowledge about the art work but giving them their own opportunity to delve into and examine art they in fact they find interesting.

Or, maybe it's just me.

New Year Resolutions? Sure!

I have excuses!

The month of December was unfortunately taken up with assignments and projects so hence the complete lack of posts. However, Christmas was just fabulous (the snow and my new sexy Mac helped make it so). It was so magical to have the snow in nearly every part of the country even though most of you is probably sick of falling on your asses by now.

I took this picture a couple of days after Christmas.  I think it really gives across the feeling of Winter and it's components. Plus, I love how my dog, Jeff, got to appear in there too. The big  cutey pie.

I brought in the new year making a Snow Dalek (yes those weird things Doctor Who) and along with the Dalek I have a resolution that will concern this Blog (woo I know it's just so exciting!). Okay, so I'm going to post here at least once a fortnight. I think that's a fair enough goal - it's not too much or too little. I think it's important to keep myself in tune to this because it'll give me a chance to take photos and create art that I actually want to do. It's very hard to find time to actually do activities I want to do when I'm so involved in everything else.

I don't know if it's only me but it seems every time I lie down to go to sleep, no matter how exhuasted I am, I always get the strangest ideas. The one from last night, along with my dream about that guy from Slumdog Millionaire, was to make cute little door signs for my cousins. Therefore, over the next couple of days that's what I intend to do. The Edward Cullen in me hears you think "Wtf?! Door signs?" but yes, you heard correctly. Recently a new cousin, Callum, has been brought into the family so I'm going to do some sketches and planning (which I'll upload tonight) of a stork for his tonight. But sssh! don't tell him. It's a secret.

Anyhoo, I'm going to try and explain the concept of an iPhone to my mum that she got for Christmas. Wish me luck.

DCU Art

DCU Art is a society in DCU that I'm very passionate about. I'm curently Trips Officer on the committe and I try to put in as much work as possible into the society. We hold a number of workshops including a Horror Workshop, which was held two weeks ago. The workshop was inspired by the works of Francis Bacon so, we printed off well known art and asked people to "horrify" or distort them. To add whatever they wanted into the picture, basically. It was done on black sugar paper with oil pastels and chalk. Here is some of the work I done :) The work above is an interpretation of Vincent Van Gogh's Starry Night.
                                                                                                     

 Leonardo Di Vinci - Self Portrait