Abstract
This body of work evaluates the perception of place from a cognitive and physical interpretation using analog and digital photographic processes. For half a decade, I have been frequently traveling around the country and moving house nearly every year. Through this perpetual movement, I found my sense of place to be amorphous. At times I feel like I’m floating through space, where I’m going and where I am become skewed and stretched. This distance between myself and where I am is rendered infinite or negligible. I made the artwork in this thesis as an attempt to visualize this experience and its subjective meanings with a series and photo book of color photographs titled Perennial and an installation titled Polaroids made through the past 2 years. The hundreds of photographs for this thesis were made across the country spanning the Northeast, Midwest and Southwest United States. The images in Perennial and the installation of instant photographs fall into what could be considered “poetic landscape.” Deadpan images of places and details on the ground, aerial images from flights, or candid portraits of friends and family are put into context of their respective projects. These works act with different dialects but retain similar spirits in how place can be interpreted when the location is abstracted and sequenced with formally dissimilar photographs. The installation of instant photographs employs this same theme but focuses inward to the personal experience of place and memory. With an attention to light and color interacting with the subject of a scene, the images presented in this thesis are inspired by all of the bouncing around that I’ve experienced through my life. Within this body of work, I am attempting to bring the greater human experience of movement to the forefront, asking the viewer just as much as myself how they understand where they are and the identities associated with the place they are in.