Guest Lecture: Jocelyn Allen Talk

               

Today Jocelyn Allen gave us a talk, how she fell into the world of photography and how she showed her passion using this medium to convey her perspective. Allen got her first film camera when she was 7 years old. In her early works, she looked at the stuff around her, such as plants, gardens, everything she saw. When She did her education, Allen attempted to experiment self-portrait to express the idea of identity and fashion projects over her uni life. She has been experimenting various kind of self-portrait since university, also, she looked at the language of bodies as subject matter. On her project ‘One is not like the other’(2010), Allen got into depth to develop the notion of identity, photographing self-portrait and her family portraiture, she did the same position as her family members did, seeing how her she got influenced by her family, the project took her into the understanding which she found she fitted well in this family. After moving in London, she set up her small space as studio in her room to continue her self-portrait project and she found that hand is the language of bodies as subject to tell the emotion of narrative. Furthermore, she did the project called ‘Don’t take out my melons’, showing how difficult to be female as well as the pain when women in period.

She has done so much works since she was young, I think she is amazing on experimenting different concept of identity by using self-portrait, exploring the possibilities of self-portrait to convey her story, getting hungry on photography as well as jumping out of the comfort zone but sticking in to focused theme she is eager to do. I know I am not the person like her, I prefer to try everything and push myself to reflect what could I do to make become my still and being recognized that telling the audience this is me and getting their attraction. I am still finding my way to be recognizable, but I would not stop playing with different direction to find out understanding myself which I believe that’s the path to figuring out who am I.

Website: Jocelyn Allen