Project #2 - Emotive Color - Definition and Ideas for Project
Objective: Use color to depict an emotion.
My assigned emotion: Disgust.
Definition of Disgust (from Dictionary.com):
Verb (used with object)
1. To cause loathing or nausea in.
2. To offend the good taste, moral sense, etc., of; cause extreme dislike or revulsion in: Your vulgar remarks disgust me.
–noun
3. A strong distaste; nausea; loathing.
4. Repugnance caused by something offensive; strong aversion: He left the room in disgust.
To me, disgust is a very physical feeling and I mainly associate it with nausea. Therefore, my main inspiration for this project has been things associated with food. Of course we all have foods that we like and foods that we dislike, but we tend to have a shared understanding of what foods go together and what foods do not. I have used this idea in my photos to elicit a sense of disgust in the viewer by combining foods that do not go together and by photographing them up close in harsh light.
I have decided to shoot in color since I think that that will make the pictures of disgusting food combinations more effective. I will not be editing my pictures much since I do not want to alter the colors so that they look unnatural. I want things to look realistic, which I think will make the disgusting foods even more gross. I have staged most of my pictures, but some of them (such as the stove and the microwave) were just every day things that I thought looked disgusting. I have found that a college dorm (and especially its kitchens) is a perfect location to shoot in for a project such as this.
I have also tried to create disgusting looking foods by taking pictures of rotting fruit. Surprisingly enough however, I found that the foods, although they did look gross, almost started to become beautiful because they took on a new appearance and no longer looked like edible.
Finally, I tried taking pictures of people looking disgusted (like the example below). That, however, was a bit more difficult to do. I think I might try and work with that a bit more to see if I can get some good shots, but so far my main focus has been to elicit the feeling of disgust in the viewer.
