This is a very personal piece for me. I was close to submitting my dissertation on Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves during the pandemic in 2020. I wanted a year-end image to post on my Instagram to commemorate this milestone. I wanted to look forward to my new life beyond my postgraduate but there were many uncertainties. On a personal note, I regretted doing research though I do have a certificate to prove that I completed my research.
Year
- 2020
Medium
- Photo Manipulation
Tools
- Adobe Photoshop
02. Approach
Since this piece is for an Instagram post, I decided on a simple photo manipulation on Adobe Photoshop. The idea I had in mind was finding a relevant Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves image and a photo of interior of the Light Rail Transit (LRT) as I am a city person.
03. Process
Before starting on this piece, I was inspired by a song titled Goodbye by Air Supply, especially this part of the lyrics:
”I just can’t live a lie anymore
I would rather hurt myself
Than to ever make you cry
There’s nothing left to say, but goodbye
While this song is a love song, it resonated with me deeply because I was living a lie while doing my research. I hated academia and partly why I did it was because I was ‘encouraged’ to harness critical thinking and meeting up to people’s expectations. Not only that, I did lose friends because I was taking a path not taken. These expectations and isolation paralysed me so much that I had nothing left to say, except to say goodbye to the year 2020.
After being immersed in the song, I started my hunt for the imageries to reflect my situation at that time. The Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves image was taken from Wikimedia, while the girl on the train was taken by Ketut Subiyanto on Pexels.
Albert Robida, 1945, Illustration par Albert Robidat d’Albi-Baba et les quarante voleurs – double page (8 et 9). Artwork taken from Wikimedia.
Finding Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves image was easy because most of them are in the public domain. Most of the images only focused on the characters, but never as a band of thieves. Hence, I was fortunate to find this image as I wanted a visual that depicts movement. In this visual, the band of thieves appears to be charging to a particular location.
As for the woman sitting by the train window, Ketut Subiyanto’s depicted what I had in mind. First, I was looking for a photo that depicts me closely as I frequently take the LRT in the city. Second, I found this photo during the pandemic. During that time, there were abundance of images of people wearing masks to get around and not pass the deadly virus.
When I saw this photo, I knew this was the photo closest to what I wanted to depict of myself especially graduating during the pandemic.
I was looking at both of the images and realised that the colours of both images clashed. I decided to saturate the photo of the woman on the train to greyscale and let the Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves visual stand out. After all, I have felt many times that my research of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves overshadows who I am.
04. Final Thoughts
To be honest, it was just a simple piece unlike those that I have done in my work. However, I thought this was a good closure for me to move on as it was created and posted to others. People may not understand the full context of my Instagram caption, but it was my way of getting myself heard and seen in a small way.