The first idea that came to my mind was to do with the well known “because you’re worth it” L’Oreal campaign slogan, paired up with a dramatic flick of the model’s hair.  I thought about how staged and almost cringeworthy the campaign was, and how it had been on the receiving end of jokes and mockery for almost as long as it’d been around.  I thought about taking something so universally recognised and mocking it directly – but I wasn’t quite sure how I would go about it.

During the Photography workshop on the 29th September, we were all discussing our ideas when the workshop leader, Michelle Walsh, added something onto my seed of an idea: animal testing.  It’s commonly known that some companies cruelly test their products on animals, with devastating and painful results on the animals’ behalf.  I decided to do some research on L’Oreal’s part in this.  I found that although the company previously did test their products on animals, they vowed to stop completely in March 2013.

I still wanted to see for myself the damage that companies like L’Oreal can do – and have done – to animals, so I used Google to browse through a selection of images showing this.  I was shocked at the images I found, so I decided to use that “shock factor” and turn it into the “message” that I was trying to convey within my three images.

Due to the nature of the area I decided to focus on, I was unable to take the photos myself (as obviously I don’t have access to places such as animal testing labs), so I made the decision to use secondhand images for the sake of my message.

ORIGINAL IMAGE — This was the image that I decided to use for one of my appropriated photos.  I felt that it was disturbing and upsetting, which reinforced the message of animal cruelty that I wanted to convey.