Hey. First blog entry. T-minus 4 hours till I have to get up for class...haha thank god for ashley, otherwise I wouldn't have even known i needed to get this done. Well, honestly i'm really tired right now. School's been a little weird/crazy, as has work...and my family...and my friends.
Just got home a few hours ago from seeing my mother's side of the family up in Sherman,TX. We went up for my cousin's baby shower. It was fun, although im really glad to be home... It's just a different world up there.
Anyway, I guess i should start talking about my project. Thats why i've started this blog. For my final in Advanced Digital Photo we're doing a rather large final project.
Im not entirely sure how i want to word what i plan on doing, but here goes. Basically, I'm really interested in these sort of "happenings" (that's what jessica- my intro prof last year- called them last year and i think it's pretty fitting). Im interested in making visually seductive photographs of these sort of strange/humorous/beautiful/paranormal/unsettling scenes. It's really important to me and the way that i want to communicate with my work to be very careful and understand the mindset viewers have when they interact with it.
Not too sure that made much sense, but hey it's my blog.
Anyway, these "happenings" start out as a random thought for me. It's always one image that starts out in my head and wont go away. The first image for me in this series was a fridge. It's night time, the door is wide open, we can see a variety of perfectly packaged food, nice cabinets and tiled floors. The glow of the fridge is bright and has that sort of odd yellowish color that older models have. The freezer is cracked open slightly and it's very dark in there. There's vapor coming out of it, because of the cold, and a large tentacle is coming out of it. It's reaching into the fridge and wrapped around the milk jug.
What the fuck does that mean?
Believe me, i wonder the same thing.
So i get these images, this time the tentacle in the freezer, and i just think about them. I wonder what made me think of it. What is going on in my life, what am i wondering about, what am i dealing with? Then it just sort of flows from there.
More images follow.
As i've thought of them, planned them, etc... The pictures begin to make more sense. I've realized that with this series i'm dealing with repression and secret things a great deal. There's something that is meant to be unseen, unspoken, hidden from sight, brought out into plain, abeit miraculous, view. In most of my planned images (which i'll talk about when i've had sleep...) take natural elements and put them into the home in this kind of unnatural, beautiful way. But they have a sort of strange, unsettling undertone. I want for there to be a sort of arc in viewing them. There's the initial awe and wonder-type feeling- large prints, bright colors, unnatural and interesting scenes. Then things sort of change. One moves from image to image, and there's a feeling of consumption. These miraculous happenings are a bit too much, they're not horror films, but they are overbearing. They creep in too much. There's this feeling of invasion inside of these personal spaces that's meant to be both beautiful and a bit appauling. Viewers experience that uncomfortable swell in the bottom of their stomach. I want them to want to keep viewing, to feel like they're too tapped in to leave, but at the same time, they're casting sideways glances at other groups of photographs, ones that wont make them experience this sort of reverse voyerism.
As one experience the pictures, there's meant to be a sense of the pictures viewing them. Their own happenings. Private spaces, suburban and typical. A fridge that everyone can relate to is more than a fridge and a latex tentacle. It's the things you dont want to admit. The creeping sensation we all feel when we think about the things we dont like to acknowledge about ourselves. It's beautiful and fragile, but it's unsettling.
That's the feeling i get when i think about these images. It's the feeling i want to convey.
This is a long blog entry. When i re-read it later, i'm probably going to be embarrassed by all of the spelling errors, and a little ashamed of the over the top wording. But yea.
Next time, i guess i'll get into my "process" for lack of a less jackassy term, and how i intend to move forward with this project.
later
-Ema-
