For my FMP I chose to showcase, in an artistic format, the five stages of grief. My aim throughout this project was to bring attention to grief, as it is something that everyone will experience within their lifetime, that I believe, society largely disregards. In an extreme work and economy-oriented society, subjects like grief are heavily neglected and pushed aside. Despite this issue being a universal experience, I believe that workplaces fail to give people adequate amounts of time to healthily process the loss of family and friends.

When coming up with my idea, I decided that I would create a single piece for each stage, so that I could have each image exist on their own or within the set of five. I chose to use an art mannequin as a representation of the person mourning as it leaves a basic and blank reference model of a person that the audience can reflect themselves onto, this then results in making the entire project more relatable.

As well as this, I also took into consideration how complicated I made each piece, as my intention was to leave each image slightly simplistic or ambiguous, so that the viewer may make their own interpretation from the sequence of photos.  

During researching different photographers and artists, I found considerable amounts of inspiration for my images. For example, two of the people that inspired me the most throughout my project were Elicia Edijanto and Alex Da Corte. Elicia Edijanto explores themes of loneliness and isolation using black and white watercolour. Edijanto’s pieces are very simplistic, but the viewer can draw a wide variety of meanings from each painting, and this is something that inspired the minimalism of my images.

On the other hand, Alex Da Corte mostly works with creating sets and physical experiences, which is something that inspired my idea to build a stage, to support the idea of my final images being a narrative. Completing this project has allowed me to explore my creativity, while using artistic symbolism to discuss a serious topic, which is something I would like to express more when I progress onto university.