Have you or some you love experience chronic pain that kept you at home?
Did you find a place in your home, maybe your bedroom, where you took solace in your time of pain or illness?
If so, I would like to photograph that space.
Please look at my formal proposal below. If you have any further questions, or would like to contact me to discuss the project in greater detail, please e-mail me at claudia.durocher@ryerson.ca or by phone at 647.444.1584.
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A Personal Oasis
Major Thesis Proposal
I want to each image in this series to be an intimate portrait of a place where someone has taken refuge from the public and the outside world due to pain and/or illness. The goal is to convey a human presence through the deliberate way in which the room is organized, and the objects placed within the space. Each image will appear as though its occupant has left, but could return at any moment, to pick up where they left off.
As someone who has dealt with and continues to deal with chronic pain, I do not deal with this subject lightly, or with any exploitative agenda. I want to respectfully and truthfully portray the rooms in which people take solace. Through this process I also seek to understand and learn from the ways in which others deal with their pain. It interests me to see how other people deal with their pain; what they do to distract themselves and what they surround themselves with in order to gain some level of comfort. My starting point for this process will be my own bedroom at home, a place where I spent a great deal of time hiding from the world when I began getting migraines.
It is my hope that my personal experience with pain will allow me the sensitivity and empathy to reach out to others in pain and gain enough of their trust that they will share their story with me and my camera.
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