Throughout this project I have looked into the photographic qualities of food. My main focus however has been on fruit in particular. What I am trying to suggest through this project is that by giving fruit a face people should start to feel the way that vegetarians feel towards eating animals. Fruit is consumed on a regular basis without a second thought for it's feelings. When I looked into the way that we consume fruit the acts in themselves seemed quite sinister and murderous.
The aim of my project is to portray fruit with emotion to get the viewer to see themselves as a villain, murdering these poor pieces of fruit. I have also only included the fruit that comes as part of a collective or grows together which are cherry tomatoes, grapes, kiwifruit and bananas. I feel that if the fruit comes from some sort of collective there is an essense of family which we can relate to. There is also that essense of wanting revenge for their murdered fruit family members. I also decided to include tomatoes within the fruit series as there is the common misconception that it falls under the vegetable family when in fact it is part of the fruit group.
In terms of aesthetics I wanted to keep the series light hearted and comical much like the work of Terry Border within his project 'Bent Objects'. The Bent Objects series took the natural characterisitics of fruit and portrayed them in a comical way, giving them a personality. I drew each of the facial expressions myself and then layered them onto each photograph in photoshop. The process was simple and I believe it looks effective.
The narrative of the story begins with happy cherry tomatoes I particularly picked tomatoes as the main characters of the series as they are thought of as more of a vegetable than a fruit when really they are classified as fruit. The series sets the scene with a group of happy cherry tomatoes it then goes on to show a human hand reaching down to grab one disturbing this happy environment. The next shot shows the tomato almost ready to be chopped, waiting in anticipation. My series then goes on to show other fruit that have been victims of these activities. The kiwifruit has been slaughtered and chopped with a kiwifruit looking on, a banana has been brutally bashed and beaten and shows the rest of his bunch in shock, the next image suggests the fate of the grapes with them staring up at a wine glass full of red wine. The next shot shows an angry mob of the fruit families gathered together with a little bit of tension between the tomatoes and the others as they don't yet see them as part of the family. The last image takes their plans for revenge out into the real world with a banana skin lying on the ground ready to be stood on by the upcoming human.
I believe the narrative is clear, aesthetically I am really pleased with the images and I believe that they work better as stand alone images without text as I want to show not tell, keeping an air of suspense in the next shot.
