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Jess Butler- Barely Functional

Jessica Butler is currently a BA Photography student, studying her final year at University for the Creative Arts in Farnham. Jess’s work primarily focuses on documentary practice. Often turning her work to her family and the individual relationships and social constructs that is held within the family’s bond. This has allowed her to further her research into relationships, especially with the body.

This series and body of work Barely Functional is an exploration of relationships within my family that I see on a regular basis but take very little time to observe and consider. I utilised this work as a way to further understand the dynamic of my family and the relationships you see within the images themselves. The work primarily focuses on how we interpret relationships from a first glance and build a judgement from that singular view, which is similar in the way we look at photographs. I explored this idea through the images themselves by keeping close to my subjects often keeping one subject out of frame only allowing an arm or side of face to come into view, from this, it becomes harder to understand the relationship between the two people as we only fully see one subject.

The text that accompanies the images is to create a distortion on the narrative as many assume that the quote is from someone in the image. Instead it relates me into the relationship between the two people as I observe and learn more about the relationship. It also proves that a first glance doesn’t tell you everything about what you are seeing. I used my own narrative to show a rawer and truer representation of the relationships as many of my subjects would only talk about positive aspects creating a restricted narrative.

The compact size of the images and mass white boarders is the emphasis of the little knowledge that the audience members have of the subjects. It also draws the viewer in closer to see if there are any familiar gestures or expressions that may give away the type of relationship the two people have.


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