Gathering observational drawings to explore voyeurism taught me a lot about myself and gave me a firm idea of the sort of direction I wanted to take my research. I began the task expecting to leave with some nice sketches that I could develop into something more, but what I ended up with was a discovery that completely reshaped the way I think about observational drawing.
Drawing Family
I started my studies of people by referring back to the things that interested me about the game Little Nightmares. I liked the idea of playing with perspective and creating images inspired by the concept of the observe hiding from the subject of the image.
My first experimental drawing involved myself. To give the impression of the observer spying on me, I set a timer on my phone’s camera and hid it in a low cupboard in my bathroom. I then went about the room pretending to be going about my business, waiting for the camera to catch me unawares.
After spending some time “spying” on myself, I decided to do the same for my family. Despite warning them that I would be taking photographs of them, I did not tell them when or how I would take these photographs. This meant that I got to sneak around the apartment and snap some pictures of them when their guard was down. When doing this i did my best to keep the perspective interesting. I crawled under tables, climbed chairs and photographed around obstacles to find ways of creating images that looked like real candid images.
At one point I even toyed with the idea of exposing secrets and dabbled with concepts of cross dressing and gender identity. When capturing people in candid moments the idea of secrets tends to come up naturally and I was thinking about what sort of secrets people might hide in public that they would indulge in at home.
Drawing Strangers
To get some studies of people in real life, I went to Woodford train station with my sketchbook and sketched the people on the opposite platform as they went about their business.
When I went to the station, I had initially planned on producing some sketches and taking a few photographs so that I could later develop my drawings. However, when I got there I completely lost the nerve to do it. When I think of artists and photographers going out in public and taking snaps or drawing, it always feels like this romantic thing, but when it was my turn to do it I felt so uncomfortable.
I’ve been to more than a few life drawing and drawn people in far closer proximity and with far fewer clothes compared to these people at the station, but somehow this felt so much more intimate. Something about observing people when they weren’t aware felt invasive, even when they were in a public space and even in my natural line of sight. While they were almost completely unaware of my presence, I felt more exposed than ever.
Ultimately, I decided that this way of working just isn’t for me. Drawing scenes of the real world is something I can do, but focusing on particular people feels so invasive. Life drawing is a kind of voyeurism, but what is it that makes a drawing any less intimate than a photograph? What would be the different reactions of someone finding a drawing of themselves compared to finding a photograph?
I think going forward I would like to continue exploring these ideas. I want to research more deeply into the different types of voyeurism and public perception of them.
alicia hempsted 