Thesis work in progress 3

My most recent round of layered images. These images focus on the people layered in them or the environments they inhabit.

Thesis Proposal

Without memories, time is immaterial. Only the ideas that are locked in our brains remind us how time comes and goes. I believe in the collective conscious, that we all are the same, and that we are all equal. We all have memories that are special to us, but those memories are not unique. Just like we all have a brain, skin and bones, we all have the memory of sitting with someone we love, in a special place, at a special time. I want to explore how we experience memories, how they change over time, and how collectively, our memories all become essentially the same. Memory is seriously dictated by perception- perception that is incredibly different for everyone. Even at different ages, our perception changes when the world around us changes. 

This semester, the work I have been doing has grown and changed. What started as a separate project became the process for which my thesis work is being done. I started using historical photos and layering them in Photoshop to make them nightmarish. My work has now grown into a critical process that I must follow: I find images (which are now all of my own family photos- no longer anonymous historical photos), scan them into digital copies using a high quality scanner, then layer them in Photoshop to create a distorted effect, must like our memories become distorted over time. I have also tried to collage the images digitally, but the result was unprofessional and not what I wanted for my images. A few artists that I have looked at use a technique very similar to mine by layering photos many times, to the point that they are unrecognizable. My desired effect is for part of each layer to be discernible, and not completely hidden. The reason I want bits and pieces still visible is because I can pick through my brain and remember going out to dinner for my tenth birthday, opening the gifts that I received, pulling the sweater out of the package, and holding it up to myself. I cannot remember who was sitting in what seat, what the wrapping paper looked like, or how long my mother’s hair was.

How does a photograph affect memory? I have seen so many family photos from that birthday part that I am unable to discern which memories are real and which are fabricated from a photograph. Voices are not captured in photographs, so I know that my memory of my late great-grandmother’s voice is a real memory. The smell that lingered on her after she came home from the nursing home for a holiday is captured in my mind- not a photograph. However, the feel of the sweater that she always wanted me to wear may be fabricated because I have felt that fabric many times since she died. Because of these things, my memory of her is affected, perhaps even altered, to a point that I could not identify what was a real occurrence and what was conceived in my own mind.

Memories are important to all of us. My family has been struck hard by dementia and Alzheimer's. As we are young, our memories are as strong as our body, unfaltering in our own mind. As we age, memory is often the first thing to go. We become forgetful about where our car keys are, or never remember to take the grocery list when we go out shopping. In our last few years, for some people, memory is all we have left. Our body strength is gone, so we are often left to sit in a chair and remember our past many years. For less fortunate others, there is no memory, and if there is, it could not possibly be 'accurate' according to what happened forty, fifty, or sixty years ago. Time changes everything. Although details like the name of the elementary school one attended can be recalled, the look of the hallway may be remembered differently. If I went back to the school I attended in the first grade, seeing it would change my memory. Fifteen years later, I am much taller and am physically seeing the school differently. This new memory would somehow mesh into the old one to create a new hybrid memory- replacing the other with altered versions of themselves.

After this semester, I am going to continue working with this idea for the rest of the year. I want to continue using my own family photos to express how memory can be deluded and jumbled. I have thought about physically layering the images and sort of collaging them, but right now I will continue doing them digitally. I have found a paper that I really enjoy working with that reminds me of the flat hard-backed photos of old. Eventually, I will plan to frame the images I present, but I have yet to decide if they will be color or black and white.

The Fixed Shadow: A Juried Photography Exhibition of Camera-less Images

This show was very interesting to me and I really wish we’d have had more time to see it. The idea of creating a Photograph without a camera in strange and new to me. I have always been into the disposable cameras that you use once and send off to be processed, only to be returned as prints. In my mind, that connects somehow to the idea of not using a camera (even though you really are using one). 

I always find it interesting how galleries have different rooms. I suppose it is to break up the space and give each piece of work it’s credit due, but sometimes I feel like I miss things because of walls. I like to come back to things over and over, after looking at more work between the one I respond to, so I might like to visit a gallery one day that is just a huge massive room that has art hung everywhere, with no additional walls. I found the steps in the gallery at Wright State interesting because they went up to another level that not only had work, but also provided a different view point to the work down on the level below. Seeing all the work (or at least most of it) in frames gave a refreshing finished quality that we don’t see much in DAAP. Something about frames focuses me, which is undoubtedly the reason that galleries and museums choose to use them. 

The one series that got me really excited was Christopher Colville’s gunpowder images. My fiancé and I go trap shooting and are somewhat gun enthusiasts (he more than I). When I saw that the images were made using ignited gunpowder as the exposer, I became very excited and immediately texted my fiancé (who isn’t really into art) who thought the idea was also very interesting.

Being in that gallery with the different types of wet processes made me want to go back into the darkroom. I enjoy what I’m doing now, but there was just something that makes wet printing rewarding. Perhaps it is all of the time and effort that goes into making a single print? I don’t know. I do know that when I did take a wet printing class, I had a lot of issues that semester. It was a rough time for me anyway, and spending hours upon hours alone in the darkroom hiding in a back corner of DAAP jus didn’t set well with me. I was very depressed and because of how I was feeling, I thought that I hated wet photography. Seeing these shows, two years after the last time I was in a darkroom makes me want to try again.

A few weeks ago my family and I watched the new version of Les Mis. It was terrible. It was so long and drawn out, by the time the end came I was bored out of my mind. Even though we all disliked the movie so much (except my sister and brother-in-law who I suspect was wearing a brave face) I keep wanting to watch it again. I keep hoping it will be better the second time. I feel the same way about darkroom printing. I think that since my life is going well right now maybe I can handle being alone in the dark. There is still a part of me that thinks my nightmares will come back if I spend enough time in the dark room, which scares me. Perhaps it would be better for me to stick to digital printing, but this is my last chance to work in a darkroom for who knows how long. After I graduate, I won’t have access to a darkroom and I might regret that.

P.S. If anyone wants a free copy of Les Mis to give it a try, let me know. Like, for reals.