Wearing Research.
Image 1.
This photo features a police officer holding a sign that says the word "HELP". The police officer is stood in the middle of the street, possibly on duty, whilst staring into the camera lens. Wearing has used deep depth of field, to capture the officer's surroundings. This image also uses a simple composition, with lots of space surrounding the police officer. I think that Gillian Wearing took of these images like this to portray the vulnerability of police officers. Contextually, this is a real police officer, and he wrote the statement featured on the sign. The ambiguity of the statement allows the viewer to interpret the meaning. The ambiguity could also represent the vast quantity of problems that police officers face daily, to leave them helpless and saying the word "help". The statement is also ironic, which is interesting because police officers are seen as being the protectors of the world, yet Wearing is suggesting that they're actually the most vulnerable.
Image 3.
This image is taken of a homeless man in 1992, holding up a sign towards the camera, stating “I signed on and they would not give me nothing”. The location in the background of the image is unknown and the figure in the background is also unknown which could be representative of his lack of hope and clarity for his unknown future.
Image 4.
This photograph features a lady holding a sign stating “Policemen No Bloody Good. DO NOT HELP". The lady is also looking in another direction, away from the camera, which is unlike Gillian Wearing's usual images -I think that this was unintentional. Gillian Wearing's initial idea for this concept was for people to “write down what was on their mind" and i think that Wearing kept this possible unintentional mistake, in the final photograph, to suggest that the lady in the photo is afraid to speak out "what was on [her] mind". This image is also a contrast to one of Gillian Wearing's most famous images of a police officer with a sign stating the words “HELP", I think that this contrast is to symbolise that the policeman is seen as an authority figure in society, yet from a personal perspective of the actual police officer he feels as if his job and uniform shadows his inner feelings.
Image 5.
In this photo, Gillian Wearing has taken a photograph of a smartly dressed man, possibly a young businessman, who is holding up a hand-drawn sign stating “I’M DESPERATE”. In 1996, Gillian Wearing had an unpublished interview with Marcus Spinelli stating that “People are still surprised that someone in a suit could actually admit to anything… I think he was actually shocked by what he had written, which suggests it must have been true. Then he got a bit angry, handed back the piece of paper, and stormed off”. Both contextually and the subject of the photograph itself, I believe that Gillian Wearing was trying to raise awareness about the suffering of businessmen and the realities of their lives. The dull expression on the subject’s face and the writing on the paper makes the viewer sympathise for not only the man in the photo, also business men elsewhere and I think that this was Wearing’s message.This links to my theme of the World Around Us because the silent suffering of businessmen isn’t seen as a prominent issue in “The World”, yet is still incredibly important.