Final proposal

Book: Rejected

Serie of found images of yearbook photos. These photos are yearly made of children (and staff) of every school. The photo is a plain portrait where children suppose to look happy.

The serie of photos I found consist not only of happy looking children but also the ones who are rejected. Most of the rejected ones (95%) are marked with a black pen. The mark is sometimes very minimal, in other occasions very aggressively added to the portraits. It is fascinating to see the choice of the photographer, to see which photo is accepted and which one is not.

The portraits are from a time when digital photography was not existing. No feedback information in the form of a little digital screen on the camera or a laptop connected to the camera showing the pictures just made, existed. The photographer had to made a decision in a split second to redo a picture. Only after the film was developed, the photographer could evaluate his choice and see which picture is the better one.

Rejected is a book where I show both the accepted and rejected pictures. The book gives an insight in how yearbook photos look in a non-digital era and the choices the photographer made. I believe that in the digital era nowadays rejected pictures are filtered out (or destroyed) immediately; Rejected doesn't exist in my opinion in the current status of photography.

Rejected tells us something about how you are a not supposed to be, the choice the photographer made and his action afterwards to the portraits (the mark). The mark itself reveals in a certain way the personality of the photographer.

Design & Concerns

The total collection consist of 220 pictures. The challenge of the design of the book is how to keep the book interesting with 220 pictures all roughly looking the same. Are people interesting seeing all these 220 pictures or is a short essay combined with just a few of them enough? Is the topic itself strong enough to fill a book? I find it difficult to answer these questions.