After having an endless list of communities to choose from, we settled on the alternative lifestyle community. In Tucson, there are plenty of alternative lifestyles all over and nearby campus which is where we took our pictures. Alternative lifestyles are seen in a negative light, and we were determined to find out if this stereotype was true. This community is important to us because they are often ostracized without people knowing who they really are, and we want to stop this judgmental attitude. However, when walking around looking for subjects to photography, we were guilty of stereotyping these people we knew nothing about.
The style we used to capture the alternative lifestyles we encountered ranged from very up close to long shots. We used these particular styles because we felt that it would best capture the individuality that these people possessed. The “Mad Scientist” photo is the only photograph in which the technique is different. We over laid two different photographs and combined them into one photograph. The rest of the photographs are close ups and long shots. The long shot photographs are all of people who are homeless; we thought that using a long shot would best capture the environment in which these people lived in. The close ups are cropped to only have part of the face showing to show the individuality that these people posses. Also, all of the pictures are vertical because this is the way the subjects were naturally positioned with the exception of “Sleepy” because the subject is laying down horizontally.
When approaching the subjects who appeared to live an alternative lifestyle, we were nervous about their reaction to our eagerness to photograph them. If the stereotype was true, they would be rude, offended, and unwilling to cooperate. However, they proved us wrong. They were the kindest people we have ever met. All of the subjects photographed were open, and willing to let us capture and expose their so called alternative lifestyle. This is when we realized that these people are no different from us. They may look different, live unconventionally and appear to be intimidating with their facial tattoos and piercings, but when given the chance to show their individuality they are just like everyone else. In fact, they are some of the nicest, most sincere, open people we have ever met. And this is what we hope to convey through our photographs. Maybe what we consider to be an alternative lifestyle isn’t alternative after all.
