Gaze

In my third proposal for the book project I want to showcase my love and intense curiosity for and of the sky. With each passing day, the Earth paints yet the most beautiful picture in the sky, whether it be clear or cloudy. But it’s immensity is scary because just beyond what we are able to witness, is an infinitely large, ever growing space of essentially nothingness. Between the sparse evidence and remnants of future and former galaxies, we are essentially alone, isolated from the universe. Its intensity is frightening but also the catalyst for thousands of questions, never to be answered in this lifetime.

In my second proposal for the book project, I want to photograph that eyes and smiles of several different people and mismatch them. The message that people are able to give off simply by their gaze and their smile is truly underrated and I want to be able to give purposeful mixed messages to the audience, and essentially make them feel as if something is off (because the eyes and smile - or mouth- are from different people). This reaction will play off of our innate, subconscious ability to read others through their eyes and mouth.

My first proposal for the book project consists of  series of reflections photographed from a mirror, where the actual camera is out of frame. Within this idea, I want to be able to essentially show how there are two sides to everything. Because of the presence of opposite perspectives, looking at or considering the characteristics of the other perspective, might give you access (a portal like view) to a whole new understanding. Although my explanation sounds political, I aim to photograph landscapes (with people present sometimes), similar (but different) from the inspo above.

The main instrurtsuction of this project was to portray a specific subject connected with a deeper meaning. This hidden message, through metaphor or symbol, would narrate the series as a whole. I chose to symbolize happiness, forced happiness, through the object of string lights. Light, in and of itself, has accumulated the reputation of symbolizing happiness. There are two separate scenes depicted where the the subject’s happiness originates from another person or people, and then leaves her struggling to continue the happiness when she is alone. I attempted to portray the pressure to be happy all of the time, even when one is not. In the first scene, it is clear that happiness is strangling the subject, who craves freedom from the pressure and standard of happiness that she feels burdened with. She is franticly trying to untangle herself as she feels as if her life is threatened by the light’s very existence. In the second scene, the subject feeds off of the happiness of her peers, but as they file out away from her, they take her happiness with them. With this series of photographs, I hoped to accurately manifest the feeling of feeling empty and depressed when not surrounded by others.

In-Progess Critique Photos

Image 5: Phone w texts

It has become a rarity to find or experience genuine happiness. Most people with drown themselves in external objects or people in order to evoke any kind of feeling. People do this by consuming alcohol, drugs, and having sex, then claiming that these things make them happier. Girl’s will dress up and paint their faces with layers upon layers of make up, to go out for 3 hours, get drunk, and have drunk boys gauke at them. These boys will spell out shallow compliments which woo the girl easy enough to get her into bed. And then they say that they are happy, that they are so cool and carefree. In this series I was to depict girl, who are getting ready, or who are ready and about to go out for the night, with a facial expression that truly show how they feel, numb. All of these desperate attempts to feel something have failed and their face will show that.

In a utopian society, everything is well structured with organized repetition and patterns. I strived to document that patterns that make a certain object what it is. In other words, this idea photographs and acknowledges the spacing, lines, shapes, texture, and colors that we as humans recognize to associate one object with another one of its kind or to compare it with something vastly different. The subject in each image is very clear the audience. The subjects themselves were not specifically chosen or directed to be from nature or to be made from artificial substances. It was not what made up the object that was the sole focus of this series. I chose, edited, and placed the photos in the way that I did in order to make it easy for the audience to compare and contrast one photo from another. I utilized a warm tone throughout each of the photographs and varied the subjects with texture, detail, and material. Specifically, I focused on the colors, blue, green, orange, and yellow, in order to connect each picture to one another. This project is successful because it fulfilled my vision of what I saw to be a utopia as seen through photographs.

Project 1 sample photos