What ‘s the position of international students? Some people portrait us as transience, consumers of education as a product. Or potential residents/workers/citizens. Shanthi Robertson shows examples of how Australian media portrays international students in “Cash cows, backdoor migrants, or activist citizens? International students, citizenship, and rights in Australia”:
“Typical articles from The Age newspaper about international students’ lives refer to them as the ‘visible invisibles’ prevented from ‘mixing with the locals’ by linguistic and cultural barriers (Stark 2005) and ‘living on the edge of society... cut off from the local community’ (Morton 2007). Students quoted in the articles reveal an internalized self-Othering, portraying themselves as quiet and reserved, in contrast to a ‘macho and outspoken’ Australian culture (Stark 2005). “
Followed by questions on how do international students dealing with their identity and belonging, I photograph international students and their temporary rooms in Melbourne.
Starting by using the traditional documentary photography method, I tend to keep a distance from my subjects and look at them in an objective way. At this point, I looked at Tiny Barney’s portrait series as well as other artists still scene type portrait series. I would set up lighting and also tell my subjects how to pose. Then I find out I was looking for more personal stories that can not be present by this kind of method. As I looked at Garry Winogrand’s “Animal” and Alessandra Sanguinetti’s “on the sixth day”, I was inspired by their method of using metaphors and poetic imagery to tell stories. Neil Massey’s Vietnam photobook collection also inspired me to think about how I want to present my works. I start to experiment on making zines in various sizes and edit my visual stories not necessary by timeline but more rely on visual connections between images. As I keep researching on documentary photography, I begin to interested in the debate on whether the photographer has more power than the subject and the position of the photographer, are they outsider or insider? Does the identity of the photographer really matter? With these thoughts, I include Trent Parke, Kohei Yoshiyuki, and Sophie Calle’s work into my posts. This surveillance type of images also influenced me to experiment within my own practices. I also refer to Andrea Gursky’s extremely organized large scale photograph, as I tell the students to organize their belongings almost in an obsessive-compulsive way. Jill Soloway’s speech on the female gaze also inspired me on how to edit my works. I start to look into expanded documentary since my content shifted from using just one image to present their rooms to go deeper into each individual's stories and transfer them into visual narratives. Greenfield’s work” Generation Wealth” influenced me by how to talk and connect with subjects as well as tracking the subject within a time frame to compare and make a stronger statement on the theme. After deeper research on the expanded documentary from readings of franklin Stuart and Anna Raczynski, I become really interested in the idea that “the reality is what we construct for ourselves”.