My Final Project

So as I said before, my final project is a set of posters. They're based off of the work I did for my thesis, but give it a more socially judgmental spin. Playing off of the concept of "health" and medical information/propaganda, inspired by David's doctor's office, I made 3 posters that address "image health". In my thesis I took the body as a medium and changed my appearance several times, then surveyed people to see what they thought of my different images. The posters use 3 of these images and break down my appearance according to what the predominant responses to the images were. The posters are phrased in terms of anatomy, outlining 2 "unhealthy" images and one "healthy" one.

The image breakdowns and the labels given are reflections of what the responses to these images were. They are oversimplified and stereotypical, but only because this was how they were decoded. This "anatomy" breaks down how society views these images. The "unhealthy" images were viewed poorly by people and the "healthy" one was viewed very favorably. I would like to stress that these judgments and labels are not my personal beliefs, but merely what was reflected back to me by survey respondents.

The major point of the poster series is that images, even our own dynamic appearances, are often perceived in terms of simplified stereotypes perpetuated by the media environment. People often can recognize a known character (assembled through common visual cues) before considering that a person may add up to more than what is revealed in a quick glance. I hung these posters in a continuous line across the wall, in order to stress the sense of picking identities/appearances from a set of culturally limited options that are repeated over and over. I don't have a picture of the hung posters yet, but I uploaded one of them (the others are too big).

-Lindsay