Restart

After a very long break from creating I've experienced the grace period i needed to start afresh in 2012. Out third year studio is very open and flexible, with a lot more freedom to explore artistic (photographic or otherwise) paths naturally and without constant deadlines/set projects. I've loved working in the studio, a choice I may not have originally chosen to persue had I been left to my own devices, and hope to continue in this direction, perhaps leaving traditional portraiture (as in second semester's 'Generations' triology) behind me and picking up where I left off at the end of last year, photographing objects and looking at the importance of the material in our own ideas of self and identity. I've found that tight cropping, both with framing and lighting techniques (especially darkness), has been intrinsic to my practice so far and will certainly explore these artistic choices this year. I also hope to steer a little away from the idea of a series or sequence which has been a requirement in 2011... In high school I loved working on individual, singular artworks of a grand scale and I feel a pull to do so again now. A return to the sculptural side of photography could offer a possibility of really stretching myself aesthetically and emotionally. Although I have a high regard for 'candid' street photography, or staged photography within the realm of 'reality', I feel more control and freedom in myself and my subjects when I remove them from their context and consequently create a disjointed absurdity which leads the viewer to experience an image on an intellectual level, rather than the easier tendency to judge a photograph on how beautiful it is, or how real it looks (I have already established my reluctance to consider a photograph as a direct window into reality: impossible!).