The picture above was inspired by all the people who submitted videos for the It Gets Better project. I would first like to say that in order to get all these pictures I had to watch every single one of these videos, take a screen capture, and edit them individually. Before I go on to talk about the picture I would like to give special thanks to:
Hilary Clinton,
Rob from Sydney, Australia,
Summer and Oscar,
Nick,
Wes Anderson,
Adam Lambert,
Brian,
David,
Sarah Silverman,
Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Eric Stonestreet,
President Obama,
Jewel,
Zachary Quinto,
Kermit the Frog,
"hauntednursery",
Jack from Taking Back Sunday,
Ryan James Yezak,
Terry and Dan,
Densil,
Ke$ha,
Margaret Cho,
Jill Craig and Shelly Taylor
Thank you all so much. Your videos and your kind words makes a difference and inspired me as well as others.
On to talking about the picture. One of the reasons why I wanted to do a picture about the It Gets Better Project is because at the time suicides committed by homosexual teenagers was a big thing on the news. It really upset me that these poor kids were bullied to death because of something they can't change. I wanted to let people know that it does actually get better and if the only way I can do that is through my art and photography then I'm going to do it. The first video that I watched was Ryan James Yezak's video for the It Gets Better project. That got me started on watching so many videos for the project. I thought "What if I took a screen-capture of everyone who made a video for the project and made a collage of all of them?" I think I was kind of in over my head though. I want to actually watch every video I included in it and because of that it would take me at least 5 minutes just to find a picture, sometimes even longer. After I took it I had to edit each individually. It just took way too long. I chose a few of my favorites and included them. A few of them are celebrities and the reason I included them is to show "Look, it's that really famous person, your idol, they've had problems too."
To be quite honest with myself I don't like it. I feel that there was no skill required to do this. It's plain. It's boring. It doesn't make me feel anything. I showed my mom and she said it was good but that's my mom so I don't think it really counts. I asked my friend Andrew, who has always been honest with me, what he thought about it and he said that he didn't like it as much as the others that I've done. My response to that was "Yeah, I think 'not one of my best works' might be a complement to this picture :/" I'm not sure if it gets the point that I'm trying to make across. I'm actually kind of disappointed in myself and I may not use this at all.
I get side tracked a lot when writing these reflections because I feel so strongly about the subject but this time I put it at the end. Yes, being a bisexual teen at this time isn't the easiest thing for me, especially when I know that some people won't accept me because of it, but I know that it will get better. Everything bad that has happened to me has made me a stronger, better person and in the end when I look back I think "Man, that was awful! That sucked! I never want to go through that again! But now I stand up for myself. Now I'm stronger. Now I see how other people feel." I believe everything happens for a reason. Maybe the reason those poor children died is because now people finally pay attention. Now people see that it actually hurts people! People are starting to take things more seriously and I think that's a good thing. Hopefully the people who committed suicide because of bullying will not die in vain. I know that I refuse to let them die in vain.
Please enjoy the links below
Bye :)
