Amani Willett is a photographer based in Brooklyn and Boston; his photographic methods tend to lie around conceptual ideas which involve family, memories, history and the social environment. The majority of his work is displayed in the form of books, one of his main projects, and the project in which I am very interested in is called ‘The Disappearance of Joseph Plumber’.
During the 1970s, Amani’s father bought seven acres of undeveloped land in central New Hampshire; he purchased this land in search of somewhere a bit more secluded and peaceful to get away from ‘modern life’.
In 2010, Amani Willett was informed about a man named Joseph Plummer who lived in the woods. These woods were attached to the land his father had bought, during the late 1700s to 1800s, he was known to be a local legend and decided to move here to get away from his town which had around 100 people within it. Amani became quite curious about his life, as the reason behind his father buying this land was very similar to Joseph Plummer’s moving to this space.
He started researching this legends life however found very little information which made it difficult for him to learn. Still, he was very interested and intrigued to know more about what made him decide to move to this area and what pushed him away from his former life. He stated that he felt Joseph Plummer’s life is parallel to his fathers as they both had similar thoughts and plans as to why they moved to this area.
He managed to find some of his personal belongings as well spending a lot of time trying to find the places that he would pass his time. He must have been quite the ‘legend’ of the people around as the locals seemed to have a fair few stories about him. “Locals familiar with his story told of his hostility to “loafers and spendthrifts” and of his “mortal opposition to progress, generally”.
I had researched Amani Willett in my last project, however, I feel the inspiration I had to use archives within this current project was given by his work, especially from this project.
I found it be extremely informative and exciting how he would use imagery that he had found that work with his project and so I felt like doing something a little similar.
Not only did I find inspiration through his use of archives, but also the idea of having text next to images, I feel my layouts have a little more simplicity to them as I have a bit more of an insight as to whom my project is about, however, I feel Amani Willett may have made his layouts a little more messy or complex as he did not know the person he was researching and so anything he found could have been fake or irrelevant which therefore makes the project have a complex vibe to it.