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Description
I came up with a concept for a book which I named "leave outside". I spent 3 weeks visiting old peoples homes, helping the nurses and aids, attending seniors clubs and bingo nights. My goal? To find out what is truely like to grow older. How does our bodies change? How do our relationships with our families and friends change? What do we think? And feel? All the people involved in the project were extremely helpful and forthgiving, allowing photographs and questions, as I grew to know these people the deeper the book became. It also gave me the chance to express alot of the story in photography, not something I always have the chance to do. There is a sequence of shots that show how im in the senior club standing behind them all, and gradually the photos show me stepping back and out of sight, looking from the outside in. Because that is how I felt, no matter how much I tried to get to know them, were never going to know what it's like to grow old, not until we get there outselves. Conceptually the book works in a series of ways. The paper stock goes from thick to thin (by the end of the book literally tracing paper) which represents how our skin becomes thinner and more translucent as we get older. The overlapping of the paper as it gets thinner also suggest how some older people start to become confused and things dont always make sense, or end up in the right order (the page numbers also became progressively jumbled). Within the book one single segment of tissue paper was bound inside, like a page from an old photo album representing the spark of a memory, only to be lost as you turn the page to the next set of photos.

Description
I came up with a concept for a book which I named "leave outside". I spent 3 weeks visiting old peoples homes, helping the nurses and aids, attending seniors clubs and bingo nights. My goal? To find out what is truely like to grow older. How does our bodies change? How do our relationships with our families and friends change? What do we think? And feel? All the people involved in the project were extremely helpful and forthgiving, allowing photographs and questions, as I grew to know these people the deeper the book became. It also gave me the chance to express alot of the story in photography, not something I always have the chance to do. There is a sequence of shots that show how im in the senior club standing behind them all, and gradually the photos show me stepping back and out of sight, looking from the outside in. Because that is how I felt, no matter how much I tried to get to know them, were never going to know what it's like to grow old, not until we get there outselves. Conceptually the book works in a series of ways. The paper stock goes from thick to thin (by the end of the book literally tracing paper) which represents how our skin becomes thinner and more translucent as we get older. The overlapping of the paper as it gets thinner also suggest how some older people start to become confused and things dont always make sense, or end up in the right order (the page numbers also became progressively jumbled). Within the book one single segment of tissue paper was bound inside, like a page from an old photo album representing the spark of a memory, only to be lost as you turn the page to the next set of photos.