Symbols

The idea of this exercise was to think of symbols for concepts and explain how you would use them in a photograph.  The brief was not to specifically take photos, although you could if you wanted, however, I wanted to find photos I had already taken to see if I could apply some context to them.

Growth

Growth can be viewed positively or negatively - for instance the growth of a new shoot is a positive symbol - the growth of an urban city might be viewed negatively, for example.  Which symbol you used would depend on whether that the context you were trying to illustrate was beneficial or detrimental.  Thinking back to recent photos I have taken, I found this which I think illustrates growth from a positive perspective, being the new shoots of spring:

Excess

Excess generally has negative implications.  It is used to describe a situation where too much of something has happened, beyond the point of being beneficial.  A situation I was in recently was a traffic jam on the M25 caused by an excessive number of people trying to get past the Heathrow junctions:

Crime

I imagine that crime will always conjure up a negative image - I can't think of any situations where crime is beneficial.  I certainly don't have any photos of crimes being committed and not sure I want to take any either.  Because of the very nature of crime - i.e. not wanting to get caught, a deliberate crime photograph would probably take place after the event - i.e. evidence of action.  I'm not sure I've got any of those either, but imagine such images might be a crime scene photographer for the police photographing a victim, or a burgled house for example.  But you could also take this one stage further and think about crimes against society, e.g. Banking scandals, or crimes against humanity, e.g. despotic acts and terrorist acts.  One photo that I took recently was during the Margaret Thatcher funeral at St. Paul's showing a protester; it's not a classic view crime, but this chap obviously has a problem with the way Thatcher ran her government:

Silence

Silence for me immediately conjures up scenes of tranquility, calm, peacefulness.  Silence could also have a negative connotation, e.g. if you were in solitary confinement, but I have happy memories of silence, and particularly think about landscapes with negative space:

Poverty

Symbols of poverty could be all kinds of things and will usually be unpleasant e.g. hungry children, people begging in the street, squalid living conditions and so on.  My symbol of poverty is the Big Issue building, juxtaposed against lavish living conditions - creating a contrast between rich and poor: