What do you keep in that drawer?

Part 3 of Context and Narrative is all about putting yourself in the picture and exploring your personal identity through your work.
OCA student Blas Gonzalez kept a diary as part of his assignment. “I decided to write the diary in Spanish, basically to be able to trace my thoughts with a certain level of fluidity, and translate later the most interesting parts of it to post them in the learning blog.
I wanted to record that very first moment of the emptiness of the white page, confronting my fears, doubts and hopes, so I decided that it would be great to take a picture of the moment, and glue it on the diary. It could be a good starting point.
Using this technique of the photo diary has its pros and cons. As photography student, trying to take a picture for your diary is a worthwhile experience and it will be positive for your visual awareness; on the other hand, the image imposes a certain level of restriction to your thoughts that have to be organise around the meaning of the image. Which was the first; the image or the thought?
As the days went by, I felt more comfortable with my diary, and I discovered with surprise how many things are in our live that we take for granted, until you have to think and talk about them. Why I do this? Why I like that? Suddenly I began to questioning everything, and my diary was the space for research and exploration. The initial fears about my image suddenly seemed ridiculous and I did not worry to include some pictures of myself in the diary.
For those viewers who have access to the diary who do not know Spanish, these pictures are the only meaningful layers they have access to interpret my diary.”

OCA Context and Narrative – Assignment Three from Blas González on Vimeo.
Recently there have been a number of collaborative student projects featured on WeAreOCA and Blas excited by this part of the course felt there was potential to do something with his fellow students.
Introducing: What do you have in that drawer?
“Each of my drawers have different objects that resonate to me in different ways. There are drawers that I open every day and others that I open occasionally. The most useful objects are placed near the more external side of the drawer, and at the back of the drawer you can find objects that you put there a long time ago.
The drawer’s project is a kind of self-absent portraiture project: each drawer contain objects that belong to me, and in certain way are taking about what I consider valuable or useful. Your physical and visible features, in fact, that is only the top of the iceberg, do not only define your personality. How you dress, what you read, how you speak, what music do you like, and what you possess, are key elements of your identity. Most people consider their drawers a reserved space, and open them it is a kind of violation of their intimacy. I wonder what we could discover about their lives looking into their drawers.
In addition, drawers are spaces for chaos too; they help to keep out of our watch many tiny things, avoiding being all around there. Although they are under a total chaos into the drawer, they are under control while they are in the drawer.
The drawer is also a time-recorder-machine that keeps track of your personal story, where you can find evidence of your past through the objects with which you were and perhaps you are still linked.
I am curious about what is there in other people’s drawers around the world. Seeing into them is a kind of voyeurism attitude (Are not we all photographers in certain way potential voyeurs?), but also a cultural travel that goes further away of the common places, and that has thousands of different expression. Each drawer is a different world and speaks straight about its owner: it can be perfectly ordered or in a total messy, it can contain a few valuable objects or it can be packed with useless stuff, it can be close under lock and key, or it can be an open space…
I would like to invite all OCA students to participate in a collaborative project. Each student can take 1-6 pictures of his/her personal drawers or someone else’s drawers. By drawer, I mean a space where you can keep several objects, and that can be closed (this can include toolboxes, sewing boxes, gardening… any object that is worthy for the owner). The style of the pictures is personal (format, perpective, colour, BW), but there are three rules:

• The picture should include the frame of the drawer or something that allows to identify it as an object container.
• The drawer’s contents must not be arranged for the picture (you are permitted to remove whatever helps to preserve your anonymity).
• A short title must be added to each picture, and it’s up to you to include a brief reflection or text to add some context to the picture.
• A Blurb photobook will be published containing all the works; the profit from sales will be donated to a charity.

All the pictures will be included in a video footage that will be exhibit during the European Summer Tour 2016 of Caspervek Trio, which will write and perform an original soundtrack for the video.”
If you are interested in take part in this project, please email: blas513330@oca.ac.uk
Flickr private group:
https://www.flickr.com/groups/drawer-project/
Visit Blas’ blog here.