After the review...

So Wednesday we had a review day, which was extremely helpful, even though I was nervous as hell! But I took in my tracing paper maps I've been working on, which consist of coloured dots for peoples houses and lines between them indicating that families path of houses as it were. Lecturers seemed to like it and understood what I was getting at, but unsure of exactly what I was going to do next. One lecturer said they almost looked like constellations, which really made me excited as I LOVE space! It completely fascinates me and I love to just think about it and how uncomprehendingly big it is! So I started to think about this and quite a few ideas have popped into my head as to what I can do next now. I'm in the process of scanning in my tracing paper "constellations" and have been playing with putting them on top of existing family photographs, although I'm not sure about the results (I would have put an image on here but it's not letting me for some reason).

Another idea that has come to me has been to pierce holes through existing negatives of the family and try to print them. I have no idea how this will turn out but it's worth a try, and the results could be interesting. It also means using the darkrooms which I havent done in a long time but I may as well use them while I have the chance.

The third idea I have is to create these constellations on black paper by piercing them with a pin and putting them in a lightbox (or a window for now just to test) and see what it looks like. If this works then making an entire "night sky" of my families house paths could look really good.

I'm really glad my lecturer mentioned the space thing as now I can involve a real passion of mine into my work. Not that photography isn't a passion, but space is just...woah!

Third interview and email response!

Third interview with my mums sister done today. Meant to get one done with my nan as well today but she was out. Will do it later this week. But the interview went well, going with much the same trends as I mentioned in my last post. These being meeting in the Working Men's Club, and then moving outside the area and back again.

And the email response was from my Uncle (on Dad's side) in Southampton who I don't see a lot. Found out some good stuff from him also, including how he ended up in Southampton instead of in the Leigh Park/Havant/Portsmouth area, and also that my cousin now lives in France with her partner and young baby. Turns out that not everyone met in the working men's club either! My uncle was working in Currys, and my auntie began working as a Saturday girl and his workmates bet him that he wouldn't ask her out, and he did.

Have emailed another auntie on my dads side, and will email my other uncle as soon as I find out his email address from my auntie. Then it's just my nan to interview and I'm done on the interview front.

Visually, I'm still working on my map with the dots, considering using different layers of tracing paper or acetate for the individual families within the whole family. I'll experiment and see what happens. Getting a huge pin board tomorrow as well so should be able to work better with the map being on that.

That's all for today!

Second Interview

Second interview went well this afternoon. Finding a few trends already, even though this is only the second interview! For example my parents met in the Working Mens Club in Leigh Park, and so did my aunt and uncle. After telling this to my mum, she then told me my other aunt and uncle on this side of the family also met there.

Also found out that my uncle's parents met in much the same way as the aunt and uncle that we don't speak to anymore did, with his dad being in the navy, being stationed in portsmouth and then met his partner (my uncles mum) while there. Funny how being in a naval area makes people meet in extremely similar ways like that. And also where the Working Mens Club is, is at the end of the road my mum and her sisters grew up in, hence why most of them met their spouses there I suppose.

Another thing cropping up is people moving away into the portsmouth area because the rents are cheap, and then when people decide to have children, then moving back into the Leigh Park area for the bigger houses.

Funny how people follow the same paths in life, no matter how different they are.

Family Mapping

Here are a few photos of my "family map" as it stands. I've done it all today and had much fun with sticky dots! The coloured dots are:

• Red - Mums side of the family
• Green - Dads side of the family
• Blue - Mum and Dads separate birth homes and family homes
• Yellow - Mum and Dads houses together and my family houses (ie. our current house and also my brother and fiances house)

The areas shown here are Leigh Park (where most of the dots are), Waterlooville, Cosham, Gosport, Portsmouth and Southsea. I shall be getting colour photocopies of the street map I've been using soon to make the same thing with the map underneath, however I'm liking the "blank map" at the moment.

I will start to draw some lines between all these dots soon to link people together such as each of the separate families within my whole family, which house people grew up in etc. Let the spiders web begin!

I'm also going to look for a large pin board to put this on as I think it'll be a nice idea to link it all with threads of varying colours instead of drawn on lines which could end up looking messy. But I will experiment with drawn on ones untill then.