take clothes for instance BOOK

There were many things I could say about plotting a project by
relinquishing control to collaborations as this had major
ramifications on the directions I would take. Textual research as
well as conversations with mentors and friends pointed me in the
direction of routes which I pursued, though I often felt swamped
by the numerous pathways where academic writing could take
me. Published works focussing on clothes and the meanings they
imbued I realised had so much breadth and depth that I did not
have enough time to research as fully as I would have wished. The
project which emerged from these explorations I felt was
therefore too big for the time constraints to allow.
However the materials I was working with, my subjects which
included me, the camera which was ultimately taken out of my
control, and the agency of the clothes which due to their bad fit
placed inherent constraints on the subjects, pushed and pulled
the project to the place where it ended up.
Importantly however the insistent state of unease which I’d
experienced at the beginning of the process was ultimately the
overriding element which became the thing that I sublimated into
my theme. Despite my other reflections on the fragility of identity
as mediated through clothes and the lens of the camera,
important though these were, I kept coming back to this much
deeper vein of meaning. This instinctive feeling which persisted
correlated closely to ill-fitting clothes and the idea cited by
Shinkle that “The perception of images involves seeing and
reading, but also, importantly, it involves feeling,” seemed to
summarise those sentiments which I’d attempted to express in
my work.
In hindsight I would have like to have exploited these qualities
more than I feel I was able on this project. I do however think that
some of this feeling is conveyed through my depictions and I hope
that this opens up the dialogue for a larger discussion on the
meanings of clothes.