Household

Capture your household candidly with a documentary-style approach. Why not set yourself the challenge of documenting ‘A day in the life’ of your household.
Set some rules to help you stay focused.
You could take a photograph every hour, only photograph from doorways, or perhaps photograph every mealtime.

Play with environment or sense of place to create a brand new portrait of a loved one. Choose a photograph you really like. Find a location that says something about the person in the photograph, situate the photograph in that location then re-photograph it.

Combine objects with photographs to create a new portrait. Find or take a photograph of a member of your household. Collect and arrange small items that relate to them such as pasta, jigsaw pieces or Lego. Select a backdrop – some-thing personal like a scarf or blanket. Re-photograph it.

Make a household portrait without including your subject in it. Instead, carefully select and arrange items to represent them. Find their favourite spot to stage your surreal photograph, or choose a backdrop that represents them. Experiment by adding text such as a favourite phrase, description or memory.

Celebrate someone in your household with an homage (tribute) by arranging items you connect with them around their portrait. Add text about why they are special and re-photograph it.

Create a photo-text image using a Smartphone. Take or choose a photograph of someone in your household. Write down as many sentences as you can about that person. Select your favourite one and add it to the photo. There are lots of Apps you can use to add text.

Create a photo-montage portrait of your household. Look through old photographs, or take new ones. Line up and connect different parts of each photograph to create a new image that you then photograph. You could also do this digitally. There are lots of Apps you can use.

Many barracks have been found at Roman forts. These were where the soldiers slept and lived together in a tight-knit community. Recent excavations have also found that the cavalrymen shared their living spaces with their horses. Being in such close proximity meant soldiers had close bonds with their horses and that they would have been able to get ready quickly under attack.

Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughter Christabel led the militant campaign for women’s right to vote in the early 20th century. Emmeline had five children herself, but during the First World War also cared for and raised four ‘war babies’, children born out of wedlock, later opening a nursery and home for female orphans.

Dido Elizabeth Belle was the illegitimate daughter of a black woman named Maria Bell and naval officer Sir John Lindsay, she grew up in Georgian Britain raised by her legal guardian and great-uncle, William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield at Kenwood House. It was extremely unusual for a mixed-heritage woman to be raised as part of an aristocratic family as a lady at this time.