PORTFOLIO 2022
"Half of It"
For this piece I wanted to focus more on the relationship I have (as a photographer) with being photographed and through that, reflect upon my relationship with friends and family. I wanted to express the desire to be more open to them and to literally and figuratively show more of myself while at the same time acknowledging the reservations I have and the insecurities I want to hide. The image is comprised of an intimate and well produced photograph of myself overlaid with amature and social-media-driven photographs that others took of me accompanied with hand written text in the background that describe my thoughts on the image itself. I wanted to include another element to this piece which was the blacking out of the small figures. This brings my work full circle because I incorporate methods I would use in my blackout poems in photographs instead. This is done to further the theme of trying to control the way I am perceived by others. It is a balancing act of acknowledging that the other images exist (since I’m not merely erasing them altogether) while deliberately choosing to make them illegible.
"The Lie"
This is a new piece I was working on where I was experimenting with different ways that I can incorporate blackout poetry to photographs of myself. In the work above I focused on blacking out the figures whereas in this case I am transferring the pattern created from a blackout poem on top of a photograph. The methods I used to take the new images were identical to the ones I previously used but the only difference is my appearance. That simple difference makes the collection flow in a logical and chronological manner, almost like a diary, which makes it more vulnerable and intimate. The goal is to explore my beliefs about my self worth and criticise how we explore these ideas is a shallow manner on social media.