Aïcha Fall
A Seat at the Table
Aïcha Fall, born in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire, is a photographer who has leaned towards making links between her identity, culture and traditions in the form of art. In this she creates stories expressing these specific factors. Much of her work uses the objects and limited amount of things around her to explore stories, focused around her African heritage, the continent and her community. In this project, A Seat at the Table, she had used what was around her. For example, she had used an iPhone to take all of the photos, an improvised studio being her father's garage, tools from daily life, her mother's curtains, a watering can, a rug, colourful clothespins, etc. In using these objects it accentuated the meaning of the project, a study of the body, narrating "black bodies capable of doing wonders, or just black bodies existing simply and beautifully."
In this photograph there is a person curled up, on a bright blue piece of cloth, that on top of a mustard coloured cloth. From what Aïcha Fall has said about the project I know that the objects would be from her home, so the camera she is using is her iPhone camera, the cloths could be curtains. The photo reminds of a flag, due to the bright colours, shapes and the fact that the materials are what flags would be made of. The most interesting part of the image is the contrasting, bright colours; the person wearing bright red, the cloth she's laying on being blue and the cloth thats on being yellow.
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Response:
In this photoshoot i used some aspects of Aïcha Fall's work to show the difference between my two parent's households. I had used the idea of only using what is in the house, rather than bringing in foreign objects, to create the photoshoot and not creating a bias perspective of the houses. On top of this, i wanted to try and not have my family members in the photos to see how i could represent them in other ways. For example, the objects, where they spend their time in the house and also using photos of them. Another aspect that i wanted to incorporate rate was the use of light, rather than setting up a scene with artificial light so everything in it is shot perfectly. i wanted to leave either the objects to have a natural light cast over them, or the light of the room rather than using a flash or a studio light. In hindsight, i wish i had used some artificial light as some of the other photos were too dark so the objects weren't as visible. On top of this, i would've incorporated more sentimental objects and placed them in locations rather than taking photos solely on what's already there.