Commission; First Thoughts and Ideas

First off, I have to say I find the concept of photographing 'waste' real tricky–mostly because it has been done quite a few times by quite a few people before us. Secondly, environmental issues within art are something that I do take seriously, but find difficult while producing an idea and concept of original matter. This is why I tried to play around with just the word 'waste'. What does 'waste' mean; where does 'waste' come from and by whom; when does it become 'waste'; and what exactly fits the definition of 'waste'. Is it an actual substance or is it an unseen matter?

For example, when time gets spend in a manner that it doesn't add up being a positive and rewarding time thought afterwards, does that time end up being 'waste'? The notion of time being 'waste' is something that I am really interested in, and to play with the idea in photography is something that I would like to experiment with long exposures of real close-ups of faces of people. This then brings me to my first reference, 'Faces' (1968) a film by Cassavetes starring Gena Rowlands as a luminious woman with risky and promiscumouos relationships with different men, who in a way 'waste' her time for not being able to connect and bond, and make a stable relationship with her.

I am interested what do we as humans consider as 'waste' within our lives in emotional and philosophical level. When do we feel we have spent time rather poorly yet gained something positive and learnt something from the time spent 'wrong', and when do we feel we have actually 'wasted' our time and gained nothing of it. How much do we 'waste' time; when does our 'waste' become others interest?

While developting my idea of taking really light yet high contrast black and white photographs of different profiles and compositions of faces, I came up with an idea of making the photographs in vivid, almost striking colour. I want the colours be dominating in the photographs in a sense that i.e. one photograph is swept away from other colours but from red; the red must look as it has been spilled on top of the photograph in a manner of waves of time has swept over it. I'm not sure yet how to make this happen in actual reality, but I will do some research and make it happen.