Date of Submission

Fall 2018

Academic Programs and Concentrations

Photography

Project Advisor 1

David Bush

Abstract/Artist's Statement

Throughout my years studying photography at Bard, I’ve concentrated on the making of each individual photo, capturing the moment, mastering the technical aspects, creating a narrative within each shot, rather than dwelling on the big picture. In creating this project I have come to realize that while each of my photographs must stand on its own, as a whole they also present a coherent feeling. They are fragments of a personal perspective – and together - an extension of the way I interact with the world, moment by moment. When I was growing up, my father used to quote the Associated Press’s unofficial slogan to me: “Hold your nose and push the button.” It’s the deadline reporter’s resigned confession that as precious as the moment or the story might be, it's fleeting, and it is fatally easy, waiting for perfection, to miss the chance to say anything at all. He said this to me because sometimes I don’t see the forest for the trees. It is my nature to concentrate on one specific thing or subject and get as deep as I can with it, to the point that it is at the expense of everything else. Sometimes that can trip me up. During my time at Bard, I spent much of the time I was supposed to be writing college essays repairing fountain pens in my apartment, enjoying the small victories of each problem solved while ignoring the much larger systematic problems in my life. As much of a struggle as I have had, concentrating on what is in front of me has enabled me to see the moments in this project, and has driven it. 3 I cherished those pens and that experience so much that it made the rest of my life disappear for a second.I found photography. I love photography. I am able to capture the things that grab me so much that they make the rest of my life disappear for a second. Sometimes, in my life, I see something that grabs me, a moment that is just there. When I was in preschool, I loved show and tell. I would take the things I loved, and try to convey that love to the world. Photography is like my show and tell. I have these moments that I just want to share. This project tries to address the process of a gradual understanding. For me, it’s missing the story to have a series of landscapes, or portraits, or horizontals or verticals or some kind of perspective. I shoot my life, the whole picture, including my part in it. I would hope that both the connection and love I have with people and the world comes through, as does the intense alienation I feel at times. My project presents fragments of my life and of the way I interact with the world. I hope that each of these fragments works not only as a photograph but as a window into a place, the opportunity to see the world through my eyes and to acknowledge the compromise but also beauty of our experience. I am hoping that this project is a jumping off point. I would say that an incarnation of it is done. This project has room to grow and I am going to continue working on it. I am learning what I can develop, and what moments I 4 have the vocabulary to show best. My board presented the opportunity to clarify what is on the wall, and I am hoping to do so with the remainder of the time which I have here. I have recognized that the alienation in my pictures probably needs to be less interspersed, and that even in alienation, my strength comes from trying to connect. I am in the middle of rendering out video with the goal of taking some of the moments which I captured and turning them into little vignettes with the goal of continuing to back up the sense that the photographs are my point of view. While each might tell its own story, it is my hope that in this project all of those trees form a forest which looks a bit like me.

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