Everlasting Dualities | BFA Thesis
Throughout our lives people, conversations, and events leave a mark on us eternally. As time passes, we hold on to these little moments with emotions that range from passion, uneasiness, tension, grief, resentment, and nostalgia. Three distinct relationships are featured in this exhibition conveying romantic, family, and the relationship we have with one’s self. Using these three categories, I investigated the ways in which relationships ultimately shape our identities and who we become.
Each image in this exhibition is created using self-portraits in varied domestic and non-domestic locations while paired with an ordinary representative object. Through the use of self-portraiture, I present the complicated relationship that one has with themselves and individuals in their lives. The text is sourced from anonymous digital submissions and then embedded on the body to create tattoos which illustrate the permanent effect that relationships have on us. By using both black and white and color imagery the photographs depict the conflict between new and old memories. In addition to imagery, there is an audio component created from these digital submissions that allow viewers to feel completely emerged emotionally and physically into the individual personal stories presented.
Melania Brescia, Sally Mann, Elinor Carucci, and Sophie Calle are artists that have influenced me throughout this process. Every day we are confronted with objects that remind us of people and events that have impacted our lives forever, Everlasting Dualities is a narrative about that struggle between holding on and letting go of the past.
Each image in this exhibition is created using self-portraits in varied domestic and non-domestic locations while paired with an ordinary representative object. Through the use of self-portraiture, I present the complicated relationship that one has with themselves and individuals in their lives. The text is sourced from anonymous digital submissions and then embedded on the body to create tattoos which illustrate the permanent effect that relationships have on us. By using both black and white and color imagery the photographs depict the conflict between new and old memories. In addition to imagery, there is an audio component created from these digital submissions that allow viewers to feel completely emerged emotionally and physically into the individual personal stories presented.
Melania Brescia, Sally Mann, Elinor Carucci, and Sophie Calle are artists that have influenced me throughout this process. Every day we are confronted with objects that remind us of people and events that have impacted our lives forever, Everlasting Dualities is a narrative about that struggle between holding on and letting go of the past.
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See where Everlasting Dualities has traveled...
Skin Deep | Alternative Process
Climate | Digital Photography
Untitled | Introduction to Photography
Sleep Paralysis | Advance Placement Thematic Series
Through dreams we can seek a fantasy world beyond our imagination. But what happens when problems in your real life become absorbed into your subconscious and disturb your flights of the imagination? Over the years I’ve developed a profound interest in Sigmund Freud, an influential psychologist of the early 20th century. A lot of Freud’s work dealt with dream interpretations and how problems within our daily life affect the meanings of our dreams. Through my concentration I’m exploring the idea that our external conflicts do appear in our dreams and I’m using myself as the subject.
Throughout my series I explored my dreams in a soft palette of black and white and color. I decided to do this in order to create a separation of the dream world and reality. While in the “dream world”, Images 1 – 9, I shot my photographs in black and white. In my final three pictures (Images 10 – 12), there is a transformation into color with a gradual increase in brightness and saturation as I’m waking up from my dream. My reasoning for this was also for the viewer to gain a sense of realization. Although my series has both black and white and color, each photograph is shot in high contrast studio lighting. Images 5 – 9 are representative of the death of innocence, not an “actual suicide”. This was to create an intense urgency throughout the dream world but to make the viewer question whether it was actually me dying or a certain part of me. While I used high contrast, I also used my light sources to emphasize things I wanted the viewers to see. I wanted to emphasize things like: the models (in Images 1 – 4) that played the role of representing “sexuality, fears, thinking with your heart or with your head” as shadows, hands, bodies. I also incorporated reoccurring objects (such as the rope and the sheets) throughout my series to weave a sense of mystery throughout the series. With all of these incorporating together, I wanted my series to show my own subconscious battles, helping me cope and find my own closure.
Throughout my series I explored my dreams in a soft palette of black and white and color. I decided to do this in order to create a separation of the dream world and reality. While in the “dream world”, Images 1 – 9, I shot my photographs in black and white. In my final three pictures (Images 10 – 12), there is a transformation into color with a gradual increase in brightness and saturation as I’m waking up from my dream. My reasoning for this was also for the viewer to gain a sense of realization. Although my series has both black and white and color, each photograph is shot in high contrast studio lighting. Images 5 – 9 are representative of the death of innocence, not an “actual suicide”. This was to create an intense urgency throughout the dream world but to make the viewer question whether it was actually me dying or a certain part of me. While I used high contrast, I also used my light sources to emphasize things I wanted the viewers to see. I wanted to emphasize things like: the models (in Images 1 – 4) that played the role of representing “sexuality, fears, thinking with your heart or with your head” as shadows, hands, bodies. I also incorporated reoccurring objects (such as the rope and the sheets) throughout my series to weave a sense of mystery throughout the series. With all of these incorporating together, I wanted my series to show my own subconscious battles, helping me cope and find my own closure.
