Much of my practice during my first degree in Photography, and following that, during my Masters in Fine Art, has been related to semiotics and how they can be used to illustrate an individual’s personality. My first experiments in this area concentrated on people and their locations, using medium format film to show the different people who lived in a single street.

I then went on to experiment with colours and animal traits, to try and give clues to the viewer as to the likely personality, exploring my research question, “To what extent can the theory of semiotics be used to portray personality development”.

Some of my earlier work considered the impact of external influences, taking family photographs and objects, such as a set of paint pots to represent personality traits, back to places of personal importance and reintroducing them. However, these did not show the impact on the personality, more a recording of the personal life story. I also looked at external people who had had an impact on personality development, creating a dress made of layered patterns to represent different ages, with coloured ribbons interweaved to represent the external influences at these different ages. However, this again did not clearly show the person that they had created.

More satisfactory was the enhancement of family portraits with animals and colours to give the viewer clear clues as to their individual personalities which were not shown by the more formal nature of original photographs. My current work has been to develop on the theme of semiotics and personality, by trying to show more clues of their life story, through adding additional layers, and I wish to explore this through further consideration of objects, places etc., to give additional hints to the viewer as to a person’s individual personality and life experiences.