NEW project - participants wanted
What do you fear?
What is the project?
What Do You Fear? is a large scale photographic portrait project that will capture and present the most dominant fear of a broad and diverse collection of 100 people. Each person will be presented in a single photographic portrait created by me.
Each portrait will include the persons name, age and some some context that helps describe them in the world in terms of occupation – teacher, carer, artist, volunteer, doctor, IT manager, cook, activist, cleaner, parent - for example. Each portrait will also include a succinct statement about the most dominant fear or fears for the person, at this point in time.
The collection of portraits will eventually be shown together in exhibition.
Why am I doing this?
The world seems, increasingly, to be made up of smaller and smaller cliques. Many of us exist in a bubble, only ever really getting to know people ‘like us’ who, we believe, share a small number of our values and beliefs. That is pretty normal. The world can be a difficult and challenging place so it makes sense that we stick to our comfort zones.
When we are faced with challenges that threaten some aspect of the world, we might be asked to make a decision, to take a stand, take sides. The democratic process of voting demands that we do this, but more so, random acts in everyday life often ask the same of us.
What effect might your decision have on the lives of others? What if all your assumptions and judgements about others are wrong? How do you make a decision when your perspective and understanding of the world is in reality quite narrow? Does benefit to you really outweigh the potential damage to others? How do you balance that?
The danger of otherness is that when we perceive significant difference in each other, we also fail to see each other as fully human. This diminishing of humanity contributes to the breakdown of civil society and the increase in inequality. And despite suggestions of the opposite, inequality affects us all negatively.
Perhaps, through the simple act of bearing witness to each other’s vulnerabilities, through the act of sharing what we fear, we might have a better chance of recognising the humanity we share with the ‘other’.
© Dani Burbrook
What Do You Fear? is a large scale photographic portrait project that will capture and present the most dominant fear of a broad and diverse collection of 100 people. Each person will be presented in a single photographic portrait created by me.
Each portrait will include the persons name, age and some some context that helps describe them in the world in terms of occupation – teacher, carer, artist, volunteer, doctor, IT manager, cook, activist, cleaner, parent - for example. Each portrait will also include a succinct statement about the most dominant fear or fears for the person, at this point in time.
The collection of portraits will eventually be shown together in exhibition.
Why am I doing this?
The world seems, increasingly, to be made up of smaller and smaller cliques. Many of us exist in a bubble, only ever really getting to know people ‘like us’ who, we believe, share a small number of our values and beliefs. That is pretty normal. The world can be a difficult and challenging place so it makes sense that we stick to our comfort zones.
When we are faced with challenges that threaten some aspect of the world, we might be asked to make a decision, to take a stand, take sides. The democratic process of voting demands that we do this, but more so, random acts in everyday life often ask the same of us.
What effect might your decision have on the lives of others? What if all your assumptions and judgements about others are wrong? How do you make a decision when your perspective and understanding of the world is in reality quite narrow? Does benefit to you really outweigh the potential damage to others? How do you balance that?
The danger of otherness is that when we perceive significant difference in each other, we also fail to see each other as fully human. This diminishing of humanity contributes to the breakdown of civil society and the increase in inequality. And despite suggestions of the opposite, inequality affects us all negatively.
Perhaps, through the simple act of bearing witness to each other’s vulnerabilities, through the act of sharing what we fear, we might have a better chance of recognising the humanity we share with the ‘other’.
© Dani Burbrook
Would you like to be part of the What Do You Fear portrait project?
If you are in South Australia, please send me an expression of interest via the contact page.
If you are interested but you reside elsewhere in Australia, let me know and we can see if we can make it work.
If you are in South Australia, please send me an expression of interest via the contact page.
If you are interested but you reside elsewhere in Australia, let me know and we can see if we can make it work.