Sean Young
My question is: what messages and interpretations do students receive from the books
they read throughout high school and how have they been influenced by them? The central idea
of my sustained investigation aims to portray the influence that books read in high school have
on them, and which messages influence them long term.
While conducting a survey on my instagram page, asking one’s favorite book read in
high school and to provide a quote that has resonated with them, I collected answers from many
teenagers locally and internationally. My process continued with compiling a list of 10 students,
making sure to ask each student how each book/quote affected them and why they thought it
resonated with them. From these notes, I began interpreting them to form my ideas for my
images. From the start, I knew I wanted to have a quote at the bottom of my pictures, similar to
subtitles in a movie. My first idea was to make diptychs for each quote, however, after a few
tries and some experimentation I decided to make overlays of two or more images. I also decided
to place each final image on a black background, so that the quotes can be easily seen as
significant to each image.