Human Geography: The Body as Home
The human body is a point of infinite fascination to me. As my body changes day-to-day, year-to-year, so too does my personhood. This vessel which travels with me through life is never the same and has weather unkindness and tenderness from myself and others. I rest heavy in her, an oak with roots that run from head to toe, speaking joy and sorrow and everything in between.
Of late, I’ve been feeling quite at home in my body. The days spent alone and isolated run by, each blending into the other. In the uncertainty of pandemic life, my body rests heavy when I rests, and it delights in movement when I move. Grounding and centering myself in my body has been a centering and calming practice through the tumult of pandemic life.
I wanted to honor and exalt this body I inhabit through a series of photographs in which I use light and composition to abstract my body to the point of seeming like alien geography. I didn’t want to lose the focus entirely and so chose to include signals that cue familiarity within the photographs. These small details help forge a connection between recognition, abstraction, containment, and freedom.
Using different color light bulbs and two lamps, I played with various combinations of red, blue, orange, and green. Twisting and contorting, sometimes using a shutter on a short lead, sometimes holding the camera myself, I relied heavily on a shallow depth of field and a shutter speed just a little too fast for the lighting to achieve moody dark shots. While this process was certainly entertaining, it wasn’t without its frustrations. Arriving at a good balance of light and dark was challenging, as was getting the focus and composition just right in order to convey familiarity in a strange way.
