Date of Submission

Spring 2012

Academic Program

Photography

Project Advisor 1

Stephen Shore

Abstract/Artist's Statement

Ordinary Combustibles

I take photographs as a justification for my tendency to stare. Whether I’m walking to class or sitting in a friend’s living room, I have a habit of getting lost looking at the relationship between the objects around me and the space they inhabit. Ordinary Combustibles is a group of images I made with the intention of forcing the viewer to focus on the beautiful idiosyncrasies I see in the world.

While a photograph has the ability to duplicate a specific moment in time with a life-like clarity that causes the viewer to feel as false sense of experience, it also has the capacity to confuse the viewer’s sense of time and place. The images for this project were made with the latter intention. Despite the fact that these images were taking in vastly different locations, ranging from Reykjavik to Poughkeepsie, a majority of them share a similar visual sense of place. This reality highlights a photograph’s ability to extract a piece of the world and place it in it’s own false reality. A reality that differs with each viewer.

My show’s title derives from the fire departments classification of the most common flammable substances, such as rubber, wood and plastic. I decided on this title due to the fact that I photograph ordinary, everyday objects with the hopes of bringing new life to them and altering the way they are viewed.

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