Jayne Arksey : Assignment 2: People & Activity (Draft)

Pinterest, Sports photographers: https://uk.pinterest.com/jarksey/sports-photographers/

Flickr album: https://www.flickr.com/photos/jay-arksey/sets/72157655713917305

For the purpose of this assignment, I have aimed to show my images as a linear picture essay, mainly chronological but with some artistic license on order to take the viewer through the story of the Marathon as I saw it. In the process of choosing which images to use, I attached words to each file name to help me to decide which images held the most meaning for my essay. Photographers such as Briony Campbell with “The Dad Project’ often use text to reinforce the meaning in their images and as I started to connect my images with the text, I felt it appropriate to use these words in my essay.

The essay starts with a lone spectator, reading his book to while away the time between runners as our view of the event slowly builds up. As always, the event starts with racers in wheelchairs and the IPC (International Paralympic Committee) leaders, followed by the elite runners. As the event picks up, we see television crew filming from the road and a return to our lone spectator sees him now cheering on the runners with friends.

Amateur runners, tired and bleeding enter the scene as an athletically dressed amputee watches on, seemingly remembering better days. A young female runner becomes emotional as she spots loved ones in the crowd while a man adorns poppies and the names of loved ones lost.

The mood picks up again as a family cheer a runner on, the young boy beside himself with excitement. Encouragement from loved ones and a smell of the final furlong brings on a burst of energy as we move towards the final image. The runner’s shaven head represents the loss of hair universally connected with chemotherapy; her friend behind bearing the message, ‘Cancer, we’re coming to get you’. I have used this as my final image as for me, it sums up what the London Marathon is all about; striving against adversity to achieve goals and raise much needed funds for those in less fortunate.