Goals for my Independent Study

Photography is traditionally confined to a two-dimensional, linear perspective image, on a piece of paper. This is something that I have recently struggled to come to grips with. I hope to take this next term to study and examine the boarders of what restricts photographic images in landscapes, still lives and portraiture. I hope that in breaking rules and I create a new way of seeing the world that is not only a beautiful image but will also show a vision of that would otherwise be impossible.

For certain images it is important for the perspective caught by the camera to retain its ties to the human eye. I hope to split from this single perspective and study the subject in a surreal manor. I will do so by digitally manipulating a portrait to examine not only what would typical be seen from the angle but through piecing a series of shots together reveal the whole subject. In these works I would like to play around with the idea of cutting out the background and replacing the space with the subject matter. Forcing the viewer to study one thing, the subject.

My second project I would examine still life photography. This is an area in which I lack concrete experience but is something I have always found fascinating. Whether it is the paintings of Cézannes or the photographs of Andre Kerteszs taking a simple arrangement of fruits or whatever it maybe and capturing it into something amazing is a true skill. I would like to put a surreal twist on the still life try and include parts of the human body but manipulated or pieced together in a manor that will hold ties to the traditional aesthetics of a still life.

I tend to see myself foremost as a landscape photographer. I would like to continue my studies of landscapes in two different projects both of which bend the typical vision of the world. One project I will work with a disk that warps part of the image into a view that is similar to a wide-angle lens. I will study using the disc both controlled in my hand and placed in the landscape used fishing line and resting where the opportunity arises. The other project will be a continued study of breaking the rule of one horizon line and including two opposite each other to create the illusion of a square or flat world. These photos will be shot along the east coast from downtown Boston to the woods of Maine. It is both a study of the landscaped of the east coast and poking fun at what was once thought to be the edge of the world and final frontier and now is a strip mall or a rocky beach.