Joanne Perry

AS Media Studies

Photo Options

I took this picture after researching various anorexia websites and information in order to discover what would be a most effective and verisimilitude approach upon the illness. Eating Disorders are stereotypically presented within girls and skinny people. Therefore in order to represent this ideology in order to appeal to the audience I felt it is best to use girls within my photos who are perceived as skinny. The tape measure presents the girl to be measuring her waist and therefore represents the continuous struggle to be skinnier. I have also used a black and white effect on this image in order to create a more effective approach in order to allow the audience to feel sympathetic for the girl in the photo. Her loose grip on the tape measure also represents her loss of control in order to represent the impact in which the illness can have on a person.

This photo is similar to the previous image however, instead of using a tape measure, the girls hand is positioned in a grabbing motion upon her stomach. This shows to the audience that the girl still sees herself as fat due to her grabbing her stomach in a hatred manor. The black and white effect again represents an effective, emotional impact for the audience to feel when looking at the image. The image is a connotation of a girl suffering in silence and fighting a constant battle against herself, distressed due to her weight.

This image has been created in a polysemic concept in order for it to speak to people, mainly niche audiences who are aware of how the girl in the image is feeling. The image shows a sign of how the girl feels everyday and her struggle with her eating disorder. The image represents a verisimilitude approach to how silent sufferers feel in their own minds. The words NOT GOOD ENOUGH anchor the audience in due to the powerful context of the illness. The black and white effect outlines the words clearly and effectively, creating more emotion within the image for the audience to feel when they view it. The clear wide shot of the girls stomach, represents how skinny the girl is and how she still does not feel that it is good enough. It represents eating disorders to be and endless loop of being not good enough unless recovery is invoked.

This image I have taken uses an over the shoulder shot in order to allow the audience to have a verisimilitude perspective on how the girl in the image feels. The expression the girl invokes represents her sadness and desperation to lose weight. Her hands, clutching her stomach, represent the determination and also the disgust in which she feels with herself and her body. This image is very powerful due to it allowing the audience to see her expression and emphasises sympathy for the girl due to her uncontrollable illness. The black and white effect represents her dark thoughts and emotions running through her mind as she stares appalled at her own body.

I took this image in order to represent various scenarios in which occurs throughout an eating disorder. It represents a different type of eating disorder which is regularly, Bulimia Nervosa, in order to represent that my charity campaign supports all types of eating disorders and not just Anorexia Nervosa. This allows more of a mass audience onto the charity campaign website. This also gives off a stereotypical girl with an eating disorder, trying various ways in order to make herself lose weight. The black and white effect is empowering due to the ideological denotation of a girl in need of help, creating sympathy for the audience and allows a more emotional effect to take over.

I chose to take an image of a girl with her hand covering her mouth in order to represent her feelings of insecurity and helplessness. The image represents her cry for help although she cant. This leaves the audience curious as to why she cant. This could be for a large variety of reasons e.g. she is too afraid, she is embarrassed etc. Her eyes create an emotional impact on the audience as they show purity and innocence and therefore makes it feel as though she is being completely controlled by something out of her power (her eating disorder). The connotation of Stories on her hands allowed me to make it an affective way in order to create a new page. Therefore this image will be featured on the Stories page and will be a recognisable way in which the audience can establish what they are looking at. It also represents that the girl is not ready to tell her story yet as her eating disorder still has control of her. The black and white effect again suggests her innocence and allows an emotional impact to take control of the audience in order to make them feel sympathetic towards her.

This image represents the final stages of an eating disorder and the most fatal. It represents how serious the illness can be in a verisimilitude approach through the ideology that the girl has been admitted to hospital due to the band on her arm. The way the hand is positioned represents that she has lost all of her own control. The shadow positioned across her hand represents her going deeper and deeper into the shadow which can be interpreted as the dark side, death etc. The black and white effect represents a more serious tone for the image and portrays the shadow to be darker and more deadly. It represents lost hope at the girls final stages and therefore perceives how serious the illness can be.

A close-up image of weighing scales simply represent another stereotypical way in which people with eating disorders are perceived to continuously use and therefore represents them in a different scenario. The black and white effect captures the numbers on the scales and allows them to stand out more clearly and more effective in order to allow the audience to see how much these simple numbers can effect a persons life.