Evaluation

Given the exam title ‘environment’ I knew I wanted to do something out the ordinary, something that when you look at it, you double take and want to take a closer look.  My biggest influence for my final series is Per Johansen, a photographer who takes captivating photographs of organic meat and vegetables squeezed inside clear plastic containers. I emulated his photographs using food such as mince, broccoli, prawns and a whole chicken.

For my own final series of images, I wanted to showcase how objects can be a unique product of the very environment around them. My series, Hard Liquor, takes a look at some iconic spirits ­– Scottish, Irish and American whiskies, English gin, Polish vodka and Portuguese port. But, rather than focusing on the distillery or the landscape that feature in most promotional imagery, in my photography I wanted to express the environment from which each of these distinctive spirits arose. Why is Scotland’s native spirit whisky? What makes it different from the Irish or American ones? Why did England become famous for gin?

Distillation as a process of purifying water and making something with distinctive characteristics has been around for many centuries. The earliest records of the distillation of alcohol are in Italy in the 13th century, where it was distilled from wine. Its use spread through medieval monasteries, largely for medicinal purposes, such as the treatment of colic and smallpox, but by the 16th century, alcohol was becoming popular as a drink. Common to all distillery production, however, was the use of local ingredients for the base spirit and local aromatics for flavouring.

I chose to look at the ‘hard’ ingredients, which give each spirit its distinctive taste, smell and look. Research showed that while barley is a grain that grows well in Scotland and Ireland and is the base component of almost all their whiskies, wheat and rye have traditionally made up the key ingredients in the American liquor. The other differences between the whiskies can be found in the peated water used for Scottish whisky but not Irish whiskey, and the choice of the wooden barrel in which the various whiskies are matured. Gin can be made of any grain but tradition dictates that local aromatics, and always juniper berries which grow well in England, are included in the distillation process to add flavour. Similarly, vodka is made from potatoes, a readily available ingredient in Russia and Eastern Europe where it is popular, and port from the grape harvests in the Mediterranean countries.

With Johansen as my inspiration, I filled empty spirit (liquor) bottles with the sourced ingredients from which each of the spirits are made: barley, wheat, rye, potatoes, botanicals, and even grass and peat.

Problems I had to overcome during photographing my experimental and, subsequently, my final series included:

• Lights reflecting off glass/plastic bottles: to overcome this, I moved my lights so they were facing upwards and not focused directly onto the bottles. 

• Getting big objects through a smaller bottle opening for my experimental emulations: to overcome this, I cut away part of the backs of some of the plastic bottles to allow for easier placement of the objects in the bottles but ensured this was not visible in the photographs.

• Making sure the objects sit well in the bottle and layer correctly for my final series; to overcome this, I used a funnel as well as a thin tool to gently layer and move around the objects inside the bottle so as to achieve the interpretation I sought.

I am pleased with my Hard Liquor series; it accomplishes exactly what I set out to do. At first glance the viewer simply sees the spirit bottle and then, beyond the initial recognition, the eye is drawn to both the detail of the contents, and the differences between them.