Proposal CA- Breadcrumbs

My name is Lisa Burke and I am a first year Multimedia student at DCU. Something that fascinates me about humans is their desire to leave breadcrumbs of their existence wherever they go. I discovered these “breadcrumbs” on my morning commute to college, where I took notice of the amount of graffiti I encountered within the span of ten minutes. I was intrigued as it made me wonder, “why do so many people share the same desire to leave their mark?”. By carrying out this project I hope to gain a better insight into the psychology leaving behind a semi permanent piece of evidence to prove you were there.

For this project I intend to capture photographs of the different ways people have left their mark in the world for the next generation of people to find. I will mainly be focusing on graffiti, however inscriptions on things such as trees, desks and rocks will also be included. Humans don’t want to be forgotten after they’re gone and I want to capture this desire through a lens, further solidifying these random peoples mark they’ve left behind for me to find.

I will take these photos around my hometown Drogheda, the DCU campus and around Dublin city centre. I plan on using these places as they are easily accessible to me and I am also quite familiar with them, so I will know where to look. I will particularly focus on popular social hubs, for example parks, as these tend to have the most inscriptions, epigraphs and graffiti.

I plan to capture all twenty of my images between late October and mid November, so that I will have plenty of time to edit each of my photos accordingly before the deadline. As I will be shooting the majority of these photos outside, I will aim to shoot during the daytime so that natural lighting can be used.

These marks left behind have a story attached to them, whether it be a political statement, a declaration of love or even just for a laugh. As stated by author Roger Gastman, “Overall people want to write on things to be known, To be everywhere at once yet nowhere at all”. This statement is not only relevant to the people of this era but also to the people throughout history, as graffiti was discovered in Pompeii simply saying “Gaius was here”.

To complete this project I will rent out a Nikon D3500 camera for the communications building. I plan on using a standard 35mm lens as it is a wide angle lens and can fit a lot into frame with it. Everything will be shot in colour to really capture the vibrancy of the graffiti and so that no detail is lost. I will write out an itinerary of all the necessities involved for this project, such as a timeframe for each shoot. I will try my best to stick to this itinerary as closely as possible to ensure I do not fall behind schedule and end up rushing through the project.