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.
first off, i love your title. 'lydia was here' i want that to be the name of your thesis presentation.
ReplyDeletei love the idea you have about mixing all these important medias into one body of work. i'm actually toying with the same thing with the work in doing right now as well. mixing staged/cellphone/scanner photos all into one concept.
i look forward to seeing how all your past concepts fold into one work and playing a little where's waldo when picking out different parts.
i will make sure we talk more about this in class Wednesday and i write down Pat's comments as well as the classes.
Hey Yo!
ReplyDeleteI agree with Ms Hinesley, im really digging the mixtures of images and diff medias into one show. I am also really interested in this idea of memory and the wy in which the image (whether it be cellphone or scan or film) becomes a memory or even replaces it. I had this moment of realization in second year about how my photography and my life should no longer be two separate objects/ideals. I like the way in which your life and the experiences you are having here have become so intrinsically wrapped up in each other. I like it.
Also i think you could totally push the presentation. I can see something like a combination of Helio's style of presentation (but better paper haha) and an installation i once saw at a thing in Dunedin (NONE gallery) where there were printouts of text conversations between several people. They produced this interesting and at times bizzare conversation that went on between and unspecified number of people.
I liked this and i can see it blending with images quite easily to make a very comprehensive show that has an excellent mixture of your work in it. I really like the letter thats on your blog here and so i can envisage a wicked combination of that and image. Other methods of display???
Yea.
its strange/interesting what u said about photographs replacing memories. i feel like sometimes they enhance or even blur memories. i think this sounds like a great idea, i would love to see what ur thinking as far as combining image and text. keep me posted. back to photographs replacing memories it should be really interesting on how stage events play into that idea. fuck, get back here, tear shit up, keep me posted, and break stuff
ReplyDeletesharks n stuff
jason
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ReplyDeletealright, so i've finally gotten some time to sit down and think about this.
ReplyDeletei like that you're being conscious of where you were in the past four years and the ideas that you've dealt with since this is supposed to be a culmination of sort of all those things plus a little something. even if you weren't thinking about those things i'm sure they would still be in the work but awareness of content is what separates artists from hobbyists and men from boys, in my opinion. i really enjoy the idea memory and photography often blurring the line between fact and fiction for yourself and the viewer and see a lot of the parallel ideology from my thesis body, so i feel like i know where you're coming from. my biggest concern with this body of work is that it doesn't turn into something similar to a glorified scrap book of your trip. not that it can't double as that and i'm sure that whenever you reflect upon it, it will be no matter what the final output ends up being. but i guess what i'm saying is that i don't want to look at it and think "scrap book," you know? i think you're going to have to be careful and concise on what you choose to include and how you present it to push those boundaries and see what comes of it. i like the idea of staging images, creating this kind of push and pull in the way you are versus the way you want to be seen or you want to remember your own experiences but i'm curious as to how different these staged shots will be and their overall synthesis into the rest of the body as far as subject matter or production value or overall believability.
i'm one to believe that you've probably done some pretty outlandish things while you've been there that i wouldn't expect, so how far could you take me into believing before i finally start to go 'wait a minute...' i think it'll be interesting to be told what is and what isn't real if it comes down to it because i can see you staging fairly mundane things in addition to ridiculous ones to give a nice gradient, not so much as to confuse the viewer but to make them feel a little on guard when they realize what is going on. i have some readings to scrounge up for you, soon. pat gave me some good stuff about metaphysics last year that would be interesting. did you ever read that article about egon schiele and self portraiture i posted to my blog last year? also i have a reading tucked away somewhere that's more of a philosophical analysis of memory and how it works/what it implies to us as humans that i'm trying to track down for you. i want to say it was thomas aquinas but i can't be positive. i'll let you know. and i know all of you guys LOVE roland, but barthes' "mythologies" would be a great read for you, if you haven't already picked it up.
ReplyDeletei feel like you're dealing a lot with that, the myth that is lydia boehr, which is especially interesting since you're shaping and creating this myth yourself for all of us to see and interpret. obviously the work is going to seem very different to a person that has no preconceived knowledge of you (i had a lot of trouble with this with my work and departmental/friend critiques, as well) so i hope that you find a way to get some kind of feedback on the website you post/the means you display it, etc. etc. etc. otherwise, my advice to you is to continue being diligent about this, especially since i know you said there isn't as much of a push down there to make your work. keep. working. the more you shoot and look at this stuff, the more you'll understand what you're doing, which seems obvious when i say it but it was very true of my thesis experience. the shots i made up to a week or two before the show were much more informed and some of the nicest work that i hung in the show. also, don't be afraid of getting a little off of the beaten path that you've set for yourself with peripheral ideas or themes that stem from this project or that have been there and you just haven't played up. i found myself doing a couple of little side projects that were related to thesis that later really showed up in it and gave the work a much wider breadth.
ReplyDeletealright. i'll get off of the soap box. i hope that some of that helped or at least reinforced some of the things already going on inside your head. i'm excited to see a lot of this get posted/come together so i can get a better idea of what you're planning and we can talk about it more. again, keep shooting! find that happy balance where you're living your life and shooting has just become a comfortable part of it (which sounds kind of necessary, given the project). i'll let you know about the readings, soon. miss you.
ReplyDeleteslewis.