blood.

    

Sat outside the union talking to some friends about my project and I noticed a 'Give 
Blood' Van. I thought of hundreds of peoples blood driving about Leeds in little organised pouches - it made me laugh and it made me think. Precious to the point of sacred, personal  to the point of unique, blood is generated by our bodies and fuels our functioning, our existence. I thought of each donor's blood having circulated through their brains, pumped in their hearts, pushed through their muscles, and now all sat in plastic besides one another on the start of a new journey. I had stumbled upon an example of meaning and context completely different to the arenas in which i'd been considering my theme before. 


I thought about the different meanings blood had depending on its context; in our bodies it's sacred and personal, in a donor bag it's a medical specimen, it's vital research material, healing, even life-saving, on the face of the boxer it's duress and power, on the face of a beaten woman it's torment and pain, on the pavement it's crime or brawl. 

The next day I photographed two of my housemates giving blood. I wanted to look at the organised movement of this 'substance', and photographed to a degree of abstraction; removing the blood from it's original context (the full person) to see it, and the process of it's extraction and transition, both more directly, and also to play of the whole process' slightly odd and removed feel it gives me.