Date of Submission

Spring 2015

Academic Programs and Concentrations

Photography

Project Advisor 1

Stephen Shore

Project Advisor 2

Tim Davis

Abstract/Artist's Statement

Nothing is original content.

I Feel Blessed addresses an array of commercial photographic genres, incorporating personal narratives into a popular lexicon through fashion editorials and still lives. Portraits from my own archive are “appropriated” into a series of still lives, confronting the state of image property in a post-Internet era. These interiors speak to the nature of commercial ephemera and enter a personal domain — featuring my homes in New York and Connecticut — and creating narratives under which these portraits live.

The composite photographs collage a series of images taken as fashion editorials for print and online publications, presenting them under a sheet of digitized glass — assimilating the screen these photographs will inevitably be viewed through. These compositions incorporate abstracted lyrics from rap and pop songs, addressing the accessibility of popular information and its ability to subvert tradition in an established framework; they act as musical fugues or verses of poetry, evoking senses beyond sight.

I Feel Blessed will exist in entirety as an exhibition at Bard College, accompanied by a score composed for the opening by artist Henry Stambler. There will also be a monograph printed in conjunction with the show, designed by Laura Hinman of Space Cadets, which catalogues final images from the exhibition and outtakes from the fashion shoots. I Feel Blessed will also live online, joining its source material in an endless sequence of information.

I almost died a year ago, and earlier this week — I Feel Blessed is about that.

Open Access Agreement

On-Campus only

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

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