Photography is more than just point, shoot, move on. It’s taking the world around you and figuring out what is important to show to the viewer. It’s picking and choosing what to frame, what to focus on, perception, exposure time, etc. It’s using an impression and expressing it in a visual image. Photography is defined as “the art or process of producing images by the action of radiant energy and especially light on a sensitive surface,” but to me, photography is about more than just an all-encompassing simplified definition. It’s more than just merely capturing moments. It’s looking through the viewfinder, framing the image just so and focusing on the perfect spot. It’s adjusting your body or the zoom to fully invest in the subject. It’s using the camera and lens as part of your artistic team and altering the aperture and shutter speed to create that perfect image. It’s making a million tiny decisions in mere seconds that eventually add up to something great. It’s staying up until the wee hours of the morning in the wet or digital darkroom to get that one area of one image just right.

Over the past couple of years, my interests in photography have ranged from highly composed, formal images to experimenting with alternative processes such as cyanotypes and gum bichromate to my fall SMP work in which I created sculpturally-oriented photographic collages. I was inspired by the work of David Hockney and wanted to create images that addressed the difference between human vision and the camera’s eye. For my final SMP work, initially, I wanted to continue and expand on this idea by creating photographic sculptures that existed as three-dimensional objects, encouraging the viewer to interact with the objects rather than viewing them as flat images. I had hoped these objects would embody my developing idea of manipulating space with the ambition of creating large scale objects with images on all sides of the object. However, the midterm critique forced me to rethink my motivations and work: I was prompted with the idea that I was trying to reject and hang on to photography at the same time. I realized that I was not happy with what I was doing and that the objects I was creating simply weren’t doing what I wanted them to. I came to the conclusion that I could still (and needed to!) examine the idea of the manipulation of space, I just needed to do so in a way that wasn’t frustrating for me or confusing to the viewer. I decided that I needed to go back to the roots of photography: creating single, composed images but created in such a way that it played with the viewer’s perception of the space that was being depicted. In short – I needed to recommit to the capabilities of the camera and monocular vision. I needed to tell my story and impression of the spaces I chose, still emphasizing the important areas that I had connections to but creating spaces that weren’t quite as they appeared to be.

In Lure of the Local, Lucy Lippard states that place is an extension of the body: as we pass through places, we become part of the landscape. As we become part of these places, we create specific memories and intimate experiences associated with that place, making them important to us. The experiences we have form our perception of the place and we remember our most significant impressions of the place. Over time our understanding of these spaces distills into what we perceive as the essence of the place. I aimed to take impressions and experiences of places that hold importance for me and express these essences through photographs. These photographs manipulate the space, taking away descriptive elements and leaving the viewer with a minimal image of my expression of the space. At times, the subject matter is recognizable, but other times, it is not. It is not important for the viewer to realize what and where the images depict, but rather to meditate on these images and create their own experiences with the space.