LYDIA WAS HERE [[working title...]]
My intent with this project is to effectively convey the personal experiences and feelings involved with my time in New Zealand within a body of work that represents the growth of my aesthetic and theoretical “style” as manifested over the past four years. This project will be my final body of work in my college career. I plan on addressing ideas that have appeared in my work in the past (the self, male/female relations in art, personal perception, visual disorientation, the influence of text on an image, the questionable reality of photographs) as well as some new themes (photographs as memories, the “editing” of a person's life that happens through the choice of images shown, the internet as exhibition space). The resulting images will be a mixture of staged and spontaneous photographs depicting my daily life in New Zealand, a mixture of truths and fictions. All of the images I have shot since my arrival can potentially be included in this series. It is my hope that while with some images it will be obvious whether it was staged or not, with others it will be more difficult to determine. I may also include PhotoBooth images, as I have been taking a photo (almost) every day of myself since January. In addition to images this series will also include text such as letters to & from home, journal entries, and writings in retrospect. The final format of this project is yet to be determined, though I am considering (in addition to a physical exhibition) a book and a website devoted to this project alone. Along the way I will continue to blog regularly (hopefully moreso than I have so far...) as much of what appears on my blog (including comments) could potentially have a place within the finished body of work. Due to finances and the need to be continuously producing and editing, at least the majority of the images will be digital. The format of final gallery display of these images is yet to be determined. It is my hope that this project will at the very least give viewers an idea of my experience living abroad and hopefully also cause them to raise questions about the reality of photography, how we use images to replace memories, and the “editing” we perform on our own memories.
INFLUENCES
- Cortney Andrews (http://cortneyandrews.com) – female sexuality, relationships between males and females, the self, aesthetic influence
- Roberta Ridolfi's “I dreamt I dream” (http://idreamtidream.net) – visual journal, internet as exhibition space, aesthetic influence
- Jeff Harris (http://jeffharris.org) – visual journal, the self, daily documentation of self, aesthetic influence
- Charlie Engman (http://charlieengman.com) – aesthetic influence
- various blogs found on the internet
- something my roommate once said to me - “I want to make sure only good pictures of me exist so my children think I was really cool” - and that idea which I feel a lot of people have
- the fact that some people make me delete photos of themselves that they don't like
- the fact that I have trouble remembering highschool because I lost most of my photos from that time period when my computer crashed
- … living in New Zealand.
