For my first Bridge Project, I chose the sense of sight to contrast living in my childhood home now vs. when I was a child. I have lived in New Jersey all my life and have many photos from my childhood, so I decided to look through them for inspiration. I found many baby pictures in these photos albums where I wasn’t looking at the camera. I began thinking about how intrigued I was by every aspect of the house. In contrast, I now disregard many of these things. This became the main focal point of my seminar paper. Whether it was the stairs and the closet doors, or even just the carpet, my childlike adventurousness led me to explore things naively. As a child, I questioned what things were made of and what their purpose was. The paper also includes an aspect of how my attention to these details progressed over time, and age brought a new perspective to me. For example, as a toddler , I might have gone from attentively crawling up, and as a preteen I might have gone up the stairs two by two. Now I walk up stairs the way in which most people do. These progressions prove how my appreciation for my house evolved.
My storyboard also captured this progression to show how I have become less interested in looking carefully at my house. I also wanted to incorporate this idea that, over time, I even lose my sight literally. I showed that I got a new pair of glasses at different ages, symbolizing the new perspective I gained as I grew older. Although this was the original plan, my final project turned out differently. Instead of showing myself losing sight literally, I tried to show by editing current photos of myself. The images of myself appear blurrier than the pictures of me when I was younger. Also, I didn’t show the progression of my actions changing overtime. I chose to use the images I had found in my photo album, picture of the stairs and wood grain, and current photographs on the stairs.
Music: Four Women by Nina Simone