Artist Statement

We are ugly; we are beautiful.
   
    We live in a large and broken world that is full of temporality and shifting pieces in the game of life. Photographer Emmet Gowin talks about creating a tension between beauty and devastation in his photographs. I also aim to create this tension by documenting our world where both beauty and devastation are prevalent.
    I am constantly faced with the reality that nothing in life is permanent. Everything around us fades, deteriorates and eventually dies. At times I think we wonder what the point of it all is. However, everything has a purpose. Whether something is deemed “ugly” or “beautiful”, it still plays an important part in the space it occupies.
     The photographs I have taken are of spaces in which I have walked, spaces I have lived, spaces I understand. These are spaces where I belong. This idea of “belonging” is one that all of mankind has in common.
    Within the large photograph of each piece, I capture the “whole” to showcase the vastness of these spaces. These large prints are meant to appear daunting yet beautiful,  and somewhat overwhelming to look at. The smaller images below each large image are small details found within the space above it. All these small, seemingly insignificant things are important. Without all of these small details, the image above it would not exist. These photographs capture the effects of time: seasons, change, life and death.
    Life. We are life forms. We are these pieces; we change, deteriorate, and grow old. We live and we die. But we have purpose. We are needed to make up this vast, broken, and temporal world.

Possible Titles:
Fragmented Whole
Fractured Entirety
Complete Fractures
Imperfect Masterpiece
Transcendent Destruction

Other?

New Work

I was about to take more photographs for the piece on the left. I will post those soon. As well as the final piece for the one on the right.

I was thinking of perhaps keeping very dramatic empty space like the one of the left. Is this something that works? I'm not sure. If I do that, do I need to adjust my artist statement to reflect why I would do such a thing?

Revising my artist statement now. Will post soon.

In Progress 2

Thinking about different ways of displaying the images.
Larger images with a lot more smaller images.

In progress

Very rough start to my project. I really like the first two images and find them to almost convey the sense of "sublime" I was reading about for my project. I don't think I'm quite there yet. But hey, it's a start.

I liked this quote by Emmett Gowin though:
"The picture is like a prayer, an offering, and hopefully an opening through which to seek what we don't know, or already know and should take seriously." He continues, "All important pictures embody something that we do not yet understand. In the process we collect a few random yet vivid facts that we didn't know before."

Show Proposal

For my final project as an undergrad student, I intend on creating photographs that are deeply reflective of the human condition. What I mean by the human condition is that while we live, we die. Given the small amount of time on earth that we are given, how do we choose to use it? What impact will we make on the world and how can we do something more than just exist? These are questions I've thought about often. I hope to create images that make us aware that everything around us eventually falls apart, can be destroyed, and is very temporal, much like ourselves.

I'm not sure what these images will look like, but I have a general idea of how I'd like the presentation to be. I would love for my final work to have a tactile quality to it. Something interactive, something for the viewer to really get in deep and connect with the work. Whether this mean they take a part of the piece home with them, or are just invited to touch and become a part of it in that way, I'm not sure yet.  I feel like incorporating the viewer in such a way could have the effect I want of challenging them to think about themselves as something temporal. I would hope that instead of that making life meaningless to the viewer, it would make life that much more meaningful. It would make people want to do things that are important to them and important to the people around them.
I have general ideas of creating large scale images that perhaps are shown in a series where the final image is torn apart, or deteriorating in some way, almost ceasing to exist.

I've thought about using the 4x5 view camera, but we will see how I feel about that as the semester goes along.  Technically, I think it will be a challenge to create images that convey all that I want to convey. I am unsure how to connect the hopefulness that the knowledge of our (for lack of a better word) demise, can bring. I also find it to be a challenge to showcase my images in a book. I think I would have to take photographs of the installation as well as show photographs of the actual images.

Overall, I think my greatest challenge is deciding WHAT to photograph and where to even begin deciding that!

To be continued...