My project title will simply be "beneath the surface". The key idea I wish to investigate are layers, and facades. These main idea would let me explore physical 'layers' beneath the surface and more metaphorical layers such as something not being as it seems, a 'facade'. I think my photography will probably fit into the digital and physical manipulation categoiries as I intend to do a lot of work with.

This theme interests me as many different approaches can be taken on it.  I believe darker aspects like mental illnesses would be especially interesting to me as there are many different creative ways in which i can express this idea, through lighting imagery ect. I feel these sort of approaches can not only be more visibly interesting, but also has the added aspect of having a message behind it. On top of this

I think that I will try to consistently create a melancholly mood in my work, and will especially hone in on the erosion of identity that comes with mental illnesses like depression.

I will initially try to take many photographs that could be examples of layers such as my above examples. From these I will select the ones that I feel may be less generic and more intuitive, and use further effects such as physical or digital manipulation to create my desired effect. I fully intend to have a heavy emphasis on manipulation in many of my photographs. I would like to use locations such as hospital wards or dimly lit rooms when working on mental instability.

I think this will be hard to achieve due to the reliance on good use of manipulation alongside a clear and well execuited photograph, however, i think the results will be worth the effort. However, the locations will not be difficult to access meaning it will not be entirely difficult to capture my scenes.

The artist whose work I will follow closely is Seung-Hwan OH. Being a contemporary artist who creates unqiue and unusual effects. A possible difficulty in following his methods may be that it is not intended to represent mental illness, and so I will have to modify it to fit my theme in some way, and be able to clearly explain my reasoning behind my images.

Oh's work is useful in the sense that being online, it is easy to access his work, and so I will not encounter any difficulty.

Seung-Hwan OH’s series “Impermanence" is a great source of inspiration for methods I could use for physical manipulation. I will follow his work closely and see how i oculd replicate the techniques used. I will also try to immitate David Mack's style of painting . However, I will use it to paint over photographs and manipulate them physically. This is especially useful to me as I intend to specialise in physical manipulation of photographs. I plan to do this by creating a series of experiments in which I manipulate photos in different ways and decide which results I believe are the best.

While working in his methods, if I encounter any difficulty I may introduce new artists to further inspire my work in new, but similar directions.