Sarah Richards - Stories By Strangers

Stories By Strangers Brief & Outcome

*Student Brief*

Deliverables: Branding, Website, Social Media (Instagram), Poster, Storyboards

We were tasked with reimagining an object of our choosing, in any way we saw fit. As an avid collector of images of people I don't know I've always been a bit of an investigator so I chose to make this my focus.

Utilising a found case full of slides dating between 1965 and 1967, I set up an engagement based archive which asked for story based responses to the found images. This would enable people to engage with and investigate the past, while using the means of creative writing and social participation.

Archive Website and Social Media

In order to allow people to view the images and get some kind of context, I inspected each slide for information and dates (seen in the research section below). This led me to find some of the locations through landmarks, signs and products featured.

Using this information I created the below website and Instagram which catalogues each slide. I then invited people to send in their response to what they saw and felt were the stories of these unknown strangers (also explained more in the Research section).

To see all the catalogued images visit Stories By Strangers Archive

Storyboards and Poster

Developing from the stories gathered I thought up a film which would be made in order to showcasing the mystery of the actual story and peoples interpretations of the lives shown.

using fragments of the collected images themselves, this alluded to the pieced together narrative and the fragmented nature of the past.

Below are a few examples of how I found out certain locations in the images, along with some more context for the archive site that are detailed in my note book pages.

I proposed the idea of this project and tested it with a small group - asking them to write something about the image as if they were the person that took the image and knew the subject or place setting. I then transcribed what they wrote to instagram, with slight editing, and posted the images with a shout out to the writer and how the viewers could get involved with the project.