Identity

Identity is a big thing in our lives, its what makes us all different. Identity comes in many different areas like skin colour, hair, faces, sexuality, religion, culture, style etc. and identity is also based on race and gender. In gender our identity is split into two areas: male and female both are in different style where a female are interested in shoes, shopping, beauty salons, watching romantic films and a male prefers beer, football and watching action films. Sexuality is a big part in our identity it tells if we are gay, lesbians, bisexual, heterosexual etc. Identity in religion talks of our faith if we are muslims we would go to a mosque, if we are jewish we would go synagogue or if we are christians we just go to regular churches. Race is the main part of identity, it all about our skin colour from black,white, olive etc. like africans, indians, chinese, mexicans, australians, americans and even british. Identity these days are now clashing together.

Identity is a big feature in photography like in a passport photo that shows what we look like also on drivers licence, ID cards even on student ID cards. It also works on portraiture as well, a portrait shows the persons identity, is tells us what the person looks like. I think identity works brilliantly with photography as it shows the image of a black person or a white person as it tells you the difference of one person and there culture to the other.

These image by David Goldblatt tells the story of these black south african people travelling on the bus who were forced to face enormous distance between home and work. The images from the series Transported of KwaNdebele talks about the daily journey of black workers between their unchosen homes in the semi-independent homeland of KwaNdebele and their places of work in the white metropolitan city of Pretoria.

I like these images by David Goldblatt as it show the africans identity as workers and slaves compare to white people.

Bibliography

http://www.wisecampus.com/uploads/notescans/GENDER,_RACE,_AND_MEDIA_REPRESENTATION.pdf

http://www.goodman-gallery.com/artists/davidgoldblatt

http://www.barrybester.com/davidgoldblatt.htm

http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/s/study-room-resource-culture-identity-in-photography/