Assignment 4 // Before & After
Photography 402 | Professor Steve Rubin
I really struggled with this assignment. When I couldn’t think of a concept or a place to go I decided to carry my camera with me the entire week, hoping something would come to me naturally. The photos I selected to submit for this assignment were photographed when I was hanging out in my roommate’s bedroom before her and one of our other friends went out for the night. While they sat on Katie’s bed and Snapchatted friends telling them to meet them, I started taking Snapchats of them. I took screenshots of each Snapchat I took so I could save them, it’s a habit of mine to save every photo. I eventually grabbed my camera and started photographing while they talked and hung out the bedroom window smoking cigarettes. There was something about the photos from my camera that felt forced and boring, but there was something else about the Snapchats that were so real.
Snapchat is interesting because it’s one of the social media apps that isn’t archival like Facebook or Instagram is. Each photo or video can only last up to 10 seconds, it walks a fine line between intimacy and distance. All of my friends document the narrative that is their day to day life simply by using Snapchat as their medium. Every Sunday morning is spent going through your friend list watching what everyone did the night before.
I showed two diptychs below, one of the Snapchat photos and the second of photos I took with my camera. However, after they left for the bar I still didn’t think I had anything that showed a significant change in time. Luckily I was still awake at 2 am when they got home from the bar, with 3 new people, I went back into their room to photograph.
