I'm finally posting about this! It was a school project from my art foundation course that I worked on last january. We had to make an installation that we would photograph for a fictional record cover (LP), and all text had to be incorporated into the installation. A lot of my fellow students worked with drawings and paintings, but that's not my strong point, nor do I have the most fun doing it, so I decided to work with textiles! Also, the band I picked is my best friends' band, so that made it more fun :)

The song I picked for the cover was inspired by Twin Peaks (my BFF and I are fans!), so I wanted the installation to mirror that. I would have liked to shoot in a bedroom, but we had to shoot at school, so I had to bring the bedroom to school, which I did like so:

This project was similar to the fashion photography course in that we had the same teacher and everything had to be made by us! So I used some wood, glue and cardboard to make a bedframe and wall.

Next I built a nightstand from an old winecrate my dad gave me (he likes wine so I make him give me the boxes :)), a board from the "leftovers" bin at the hardware store and 4 dowels. I spent forever staining and sealing them all, but I wanted to be able to use it after the shoot. I would make a tutorial but I think it kinda explains itself:

I wanted the nightstand to be the focus of the photograph and fill it with all the many things I associate with those teenage years and objects that allude to themes that are kind of universal in the process of growing up. All on one messy nightstand (cause mine was always messy...), like a shrine to adolescence.

And since, you know, Twin Peaks, I made this to be the centerpiece of the shrine:

Laura Palmer! Rose Petals! Hands with cigarettes! Glitter! Lipstick! So confusing! Aah the teen years... It's weird that I'm slightly nostalgic for a time in my life where I was very unhappy alot of the time and longed for it to be over. I think I might be nostalgic for the daydreams I had during that time, or for a false memory rather then what it was really like. Like how you always get really excited about summer approaching and all the things you'll do and feel in summer - complete freedom! - and when it's over you think "that was it? summers used to be so fun and exciting and just the best!" and it wasn't at all how you imagined it to be. But it never actually happened that way, that's just wishful remembering I guess? Or maybe that's just me. Anyway I'm rambling so back to the installation.

To spell out "GLOOM" (the name of the Band) I made knitted letters:

This is where I was at this point, I brought a ton of stuff (objects that somehow tied into the themes of adolescence: childhood, changing body, candy, death, sexuality, drugs, religion, beauty, womanhood, time, fashion etc.) in to style the scene:

Next I bought a blank Ikea lampshade, drew some of the lyrics onto it, cut them out and covered it in a flowery fabric...

... printed out a flower pattern on multiple A4 sheets of paper and used them as wallpaper, embroidered lyrics on to a sweater and a pillow...

... brought in pillows, blankets, carpets and turned my corner into a bedroom:

And then we photographed it all!

I you'd like to know more about how I made anything in the photos, let me know.

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