It is an acutely human experience to be naked outdoors. Location: Indiana -2016-
High School Photography
We Will Get Lost Along the Way
Advanced Photo Collection -2015- Lately, I have been thinking about how the internal and external spaces that I occupy interact, but are also separate from each other. I have often struggled with outwardly portraying my feelings in a way that I feel is true to the way I view myself. So to try and capture the difficulty of accurate self expression, the people and the surroundings switch places so that the clean skin acts as the external surroundings, or the way other people view you, and the barn acts as the internal space, which is often messy with no clean cut lines. I was intrigued by the contrast between the bare, clean skin and the dirty, rundown barn. I felt that, together, they created a rawness that helped to create an overall feeling of loneliness and unidentifiable emotion. The pops of color around the people act as a reminder that defining oneself is not done in black and white. It also acts as a hopeful undertone to counteract the more lonely and anxious vibe of the people in the photos. The light is often in the background as a guiding light that’s there even when we can’t see it. We always know ourselves better than we think we do. Even when we feel lost in our lives and in ourselves, there is always a gut feeling that leads us in the right direction. This collection is my attempt to peel away the artificial layers and boundaries that we as individuals put up, either for others or for ourselves, to show the universal, human struggle of self definition and discovery. Trying to figure out what defines us and makes us happy can be frustrating, but if we can accept that we will all get a little lost, we’re already closer to where we want to be.