HIGHVISIBILITY
HIGHVISIBILITY Safety First
Ashger Zamana
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High-Visibility clothing or formally known as Hi-Viz, is any clothing worn that is highly luminescent in its n atural matt property, or a colour t hat is easily discernible from any background. Most commonly worn on the torso and arm area of the body. Most industrial employers require it as a type of personal protective equipmen (PPE). Traditionally, yellow waistcoats worn by emergency service are a common example, but in any type of clothing in the Hi-Viz colour spectrum is now deemed acceptable. Occupational wearers of clothing with high-visibility features include r ailway and highway workers, street c leaners, airport workers, or places w here workers are near moving vehicles o r in dark areas. even being use by c yclists when riding amongst motor vehicles.
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Over the past two years, I have developed an uncertain attraction towards those High visibility clothing and the people who wear them. It started mainly as a spotting game on long bus rides to the Bezalel Academy in Jerusalem and became an obsession that as been hard to shake off. it started in documenting them mainly with a phone camera and it became such a perpetual search and that made me very aware of those fluorescent creatures that illuminate the day. Those people in the workforce who, for their own safety, have to wear this HI-VIZ clothing, are often treated with disgrace by the rest of the population, dealing with jobs that are considered dirty, such as garbage collection and street cleaning. No matter how much they glow on the streets, people still choose not to look at them. How can one be such a hyper-visible but invisible at the same time?
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to understand the sources of this obsession. one must think of the public space and what part they occupy within it. for me, I realized that I was no different from them. Maybe I'm not "glamorous" like them, but the way I'm perceived in the public domain is the same. My skin color is what makes me "glow" in the public space, it’s what catches the eye of strangers as I walk down the street, it’s what makes the grocer never take is eyes off of me when I walk into the same store I've been shopping for the past two years now, that's what makes the Cops stop me for a “random” check once a week. It's what makes people look at me when I'm in a museum instead of the beautiful artworks that surrounds us it’s also what makes people avoid eye contact but talk about me like I'm invisible. Arriving to The Hague,I was very surprised by the amount of fluorescent creatures in the public domain. They are a significant part of the local urban landscape and their presence was comforting and made me feel slightly At home.
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HIGHVISIBILITY Ashger Zamana
Mentor: michel Hoogervorst Course: IMAGE
typeface in use: BRRR Skrrt Swiss Typeface foundry Favorit Mono Dinamo Typefaces paper: NAUTILUS white 80gsm Print: Riso workshop Photography workshop at KABK
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