Found and Bound project assesment.

This project was in all challenging and fun. Initially, I was confused as how to combine the book I had selected as well as using the other books that I had gotten and putting it all together to form a cohesive piece that was in line with my theme. I found this very hard and decided to use the quotes in the book to guide me. Another issue I had was the pictures of the babies which tended to obscure the theme that I was going for. I started out with the theme of prejudice among Indians and Africans. Liked I had mentioned in class, when I showed my a couple of friends the first draft of the book, they found it rather confusing. To them the book somehow was mesh between the abolition of the Caste system, an outsiders view of Africa and babies. After much thoughts and advice from my friends, I decided to stick with the portrayal of African countries by the media.

Another problem I found daunting was that I found it hard to step back from creating the book and see the book as someone seeing it for the first time. I could not easily separate the idea that I had in my mind from the book. However, I am pleased with the outcome. I really wanted to show the frustration that I as an African face when I see the portrayal of African countries in the news. Having spent most of my years in Nigeria, my view of my country seems slightly different from what I hear in the news year in America. I did not want it to be a charge against anyone but at the same time I did not want to sugar coat the problem. Achieving these two factors proved difficult in selecting cartoons and pictures, as well as texts.

The thoughts that were expressed about the book in class were sort of in line with what I hoped to achieve. The only issue that was not what I hoped the viewer to see were the babies as re-birth. The re-birth of Africa the continent was not what I was going for. Any pictures of babies were in response to the text next to the babies in the given page - to give a face or character to the text. I guess I failed with that aspect although other interpretations are welcomed.

Having done this project, I can sort of imagine what type of photobook I could make. I still finding it hard trying not to be too literal in connecting pictures and text, that is if this is not a problem. I found the other books that were made less literal than mine and I enjoyed looking at them.