Assignment One - You are my Friend, but do I really know you?

We are finally back at Art College from the Christmas holidays. It's time to get back to some serious blogging.

Our first assignment is to pair up with someone we barely know ("another student who you do not know well"), switch personal pictures of their childhood, and analyze those pictures to understand the other student.

For this assignment, I chose a fellow Interior Design student, Karen Lyttle.In Interior Design we spend a lot of time with each other, but how well do we actually know them and their past!

Karen Lyttle is 21 years old. She was born and bread in the countryside of Northern Ireland. But three years ago she moved to Dundee to study, and she is currently in second year Interior Design after leaving Architecture.

While I was analyzing her pictures, I was looking at every detail such as environment, possessions, influences and taste.

I started by analyzing the youngest photo of Karen. This looks like a school photograph, because Karen’s sisters look like they are wearing school uniform. Karen is wearing a very formal outfit. Karen is located in the middle of her older twin sister, which illustrates that there is a close bond between her and her sister from a young age. Karen’s facial expression makes me believe that this was the first time that photograph like this was taken, and still must mean a lot to Karen as this was the first image she gave me. I could imagine this photography being in a frame in a prime location for everyone to see.

As I am going through the rest of the pictures. I discovered that this was the only formal photograph. This is noticeable due to the background and the formal poses.

This photograph was taken on the beach at Castle Rock. This is a place where Karen and her family used to and still go on their caravan lodge holiday every year. In this image you immediately know that she is with her Mum and Dad. Karen is the focal point here due to the body contact that her mum and dad are giving. From this photo I felt that Karen was closer to her dad rather than her mum. This is very interesting because Karen feels she is closer to her Mum. Karen is wearing casual clothes here that are suitable for the beach.

The next image is taken at the same place as the one before, Castle Rock beach. In this photograph, Karen is with her twin sisters and one of her younger brothers. They had just completed making a rowing boat out of sand. Karen is once again located in the middle. In front of her is her brother who seems to be excluded from the girls or maybe he is just excited to have the photo taken because of his smile. Her sister at the back of the boat also seems to be excluded, this may be due to her thinking that she is too old for all this or maybe she is just trying to get herself into the photo because Karen is in the way.The sister to the left of Karen appears to be the closest to her because of the way she is leaning towards her. It was interesting to find out that that sister is also studying in Dundee even though Karen said she was really close to both of her sisters.

This is Karen 13^th birthday. There are six girls in this image, who all lived on her street, outside a house. Two of the girls are Karen’s best friends and they still are today. This is a very posed photo as they are all in height order holding one another’s hips. It was really hard to pick Karen out of in this because she has dark hair.

In this photograph there are seven girls including Karen. This image would have been taken at Christmas time as there is a Christmas tree in the background on the right. Speaking to Karen, I found out that this group of friends are family friends and also church friends .The dress sense in this picture has changed to much more formal party clothes which makes me think that they are having a Christmas get together.

The last photograph Karen gave me was the most recent. The image is of her and her friends three years ago at Caste Rock in the caravan lodge. The last three photos that Karen has given me have the same friends except they look older in each image.

I feel that this has been a really interesting exercise, trying to analyze people though photos. By analyzing Karen Lyttle I have learnt a lot about her and her past so much so that I feel that I was there. I felt that that these images were a good range of photographs even though there are only six. To analyze her more in depth I would have to see more images of her growing up to more recent photographs, as the most current one was three years ago and she has changed a lot since them.