Aidan Dunbar

I went to the Poverty Aid charity shop this morning with James with the aim of finding a suitable suitcase for the new “pack your bags” project. I’ve walked past this building many times now since moving to Leeds, and never had a desire to go in, but I think it is worth just taking a little look around to see if there is anything that catches your eye.

I was looking for something a little bit old school, preferably with the cool corner protector bits for added aesthetic value. Funky interior fabric could be useful as well, just to spice things up a bit.

James found the perfect one while I was searching through a pile of cases in a corner. Nice size; not too big and not too small either. The catches are what I was looking for and it even has the corner thingys. A little bit of Back-2-Black (the car bumper restorer) and it will be back to almost original condition - although it is surprising what a simple wipe down with a damp sponge has done. I’ll get a photo once I get into the studio after Berlin next week.

The brief itself involves photographing a ‘bag’ in the studio with a 5x4 large format camera, on a sheet of Fuji’s Velvia 100 film. Like previous assignments, no Photoshop adjustment is allowed - everything must be created ‘in camera’ - but to be honest with film this saturated and contrasty there shouldn’t be a need for any post production at all, providing everything is lit correctly and exposed properly.

The idea I’m running with at the moment is to represent the chaos that occurs when you get home from holiday or when you move into a new house with clothes and other objects ‘flying’ out of the case, shaped with stiff wire and hung from the rig with lightweight fishing line. Provided no direct light falls on these wires (achieved through careful placement of lighting and black cardboard flags) they should in theory be invisible.

That’s the idea anyway.