Reflection the Photography Project - Ideas

After discussing with tutors, my idea settles with something to do with Asian faces.

Very often there are people asking if I am from Japan or assumed that I am from China. Last year when I was in International Foundation I met a lot of Asians: Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Taiwanese, Nepalese... Not every white face is British, so as not every asian face is Chinese (and no we don't look the same). It was a very multi-cultural environment and I learnt a lot from them. In one of the projects I made a video to explore the process of change of international students’ mental activity in the journey to a foreign country (with 16 languages recorded).

The video I made from last year: 

For this Photography Project...
I would like to voice out and make people reflect on their assumption on faces.
It will be 5 different asian faces with tags of non-asian countries. 

Background

I have two ideas about the background and I haven't decide which one to use yet. Therefore, I will take photos of my subject with different backgrounds:

1. White/grey-ish background (like a passport photo)
2. A place where the subjects feel strongly related to

It is about identity. The passport photo background gives you the identity and the place the subjects choose represents their identity as well. I prefer the passport photo background more not only because it will definitely make my final work looks clean and perhaps visually strong within the first few glance but also more relate to my theme of showing their identities. Passport photos are the first step to get your passports as your identification, so as your faces gives the "hint" of where you come from.


Subjects

I will start with people who are born in non-asian countries but the final 5 subjects are not all necessarily be born in non-asian countries. The point is to confuse viewers and make them to re-think about the true identities of different faces. So far, I have got 4 subjects who were born in Canada, Portugal and the UK.

Facial expressions matters and I will try with two sets: face with no expression and face with expression when people ask them if they are from China/ Korea/ Japan etc.

Tags

The tags will either be in the photo or separate from the photo as the title of it.

If in the photo, I thinking to ask the subjects to hold a piece of paper, written the countries that they were born in, like the criminal photos. It is like a metaphor of them being accused of something they are not or they are, anyway you assumed they are the same.

Post-production 

I don't think much Photoshop will be needed for the final stills. But I would like to test some stuff out like photoshopping their facial features to make them more alike or swap the facial features. The final stills should look clean and simple.

List of Images

With each subject, I attempt to achieve these images:

1. Grey background + no expression + tags as title
2. Grey background + no expression + holding paper
3. Grey background + yes expression + tags as title
4. Grey background + yes expression + holding paper
5. Subject choose background + no expression + tags as title
6. Subject choose background + no expression + holding paper
7. Subject choose background + yes expression + tags as title
8. Subject choose background + yes expression + holding paper