Hired Goons Artist Statement
Artist Statement
Alphonso Whitfield
HIRED GOONS is a song produced and written by the UK electronic duo EVIL NINE.
In the video I produced I have used the low and foreboding tone of the song to help portray a fictional city and fictional characters based off a place I created in a book my freshman year of college. These characters live in a city which is plagued by corruption and soon find themselves slowly pulled into it in order to achieve their own desires for progression in life, whether in the town or not.
The narrative presented in the video is one of struggle from a reckless and selfish hero. I have been interested in the contrast of struggle between what people feel is right and wrong and what people feel is just or unjust in order to achieve a goal that is positive for the individual in it’s outcome though the process may be unjust or illegal. In the video is not directly discussed but is quickly mentioned through imagery that the politician the main character is working for is working in the drug scene and also the prostitution scene in order to get money to stay in business and that our “hero” is a poor denizen of the city. Though, Much like the politicians are corrupt, it offers the question of whether the main character is corrupt in his actions as well.
As a photographer I have used video as a means of offering this conflict in the best way I could see fit. In the book I produced, there was a narrative directly related to the photographs. I had the choice to include this narrative in some ways but went instead a route that used the music and cinematography to speak for me and allow the viewer to visually piece the story together for themselves in a new way that could support the photographs produced. The last four years as a practicing commercial and documentary photographer have given me the skills to produce a story which could be interpreted in many ways while shot in a voyeuristic style, much like a documentary would be shot.
