Feral Child

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Shooting Ideas

•Moving image, camera will be placed downwards, only filming bare feet running out from the woods to the city.

No speaking, apart from the sound of the surrounding area, running and breathing.

• Still image, 12 year old boy, photographed in the city centre surrounded by people, but somehow different to everyone else. Modern day twist.

Interpret Milk and Oh God into the image (as these were the first and only words he could speak.)

•Digital to start with for the still image, then move onto medium format film.

•Colour, to highlight the contrasts between environment.

Paintings and Sculptures

Painting of 'Wild Peter' hangs in Kensington Palace.

Romulus and Remus: who were abandoned by their parents at birth and were raised by wolves, as depicted in this statue which has come to be known as an icon of Rome.

Modern Cases of Feral Child

•Oxana Malaya was born in 1983 and was discovered as a feral child in 1991.

•At the age of three she was exiled from her home by her drug addicted parents and took shelter in a shed inhabited by wild dogs near her home.

•She was raised by the wild dogs and learnt to behave like them. She even developed an acute sense of smell, hearing and sight.

•When she was discovered she could only say ‘yes’ and ‘no’. But by 2010 she can speak and most of her behavioral problems have been fixed.

•She now resides in a home for the mentally handicapped.

Fiction

• Jungle Book:

• Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burrough. Where Tarzan’s mother dies of natural causes and his father is killed by the leader of the apes (Kerchak), who later adopts him.

• The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling. Where Mowgli is lost by his parents during a tiger attack and he is raised by wolves.

Victor of Aveyron

•Born around 1785 and apparently lived his whole life naked in the woods before being spotted wandering in the woods near Saint Sernin sur Rance.

•In 1800 he emerged from the forest on his own and was largely welcomed by the citizens of the village.

•He was studied by Jean Marc Gaspard Itard a young medical student who adopted him into his home and attempted to teach him to communicate.

•Victor only learnt how to spell out Lait (milk) and Oh, Dieu (Oh, God)

Feral Child

What is a Feral Child?

•A feral child, is a human child who has lived isolated from human contact from a very young age, and has no (or little) experience of human care, loving or social behavior, and, crucially, of human language.

From doing research around feral children, it is clear to see that there are many examples from all over the world. These are just two of many websites which talk about examples of feral children

http://listverse.com/2008/03/07/10-modern-cases-of-feral-children/

http://www.blatantworld.com/documentary/wild_child_the_story_of_feral_children.html

Staged/Restaged

Choosing an event that happened before 1839, in groups we have to create a single still image and a short, edited moving image piece which, represents our chosen historical event.

I will look at the work of photographers and artists that have staged historical and contemporary events, to help inform my own work.

We have chosen 'The Wild Boy of Aveyron' commonly known as, 'Victor of Aveyron' as our historical event.