Date of Submission
Spring 2015
Academic Programs and Concentrations
Photography
Project Advisor 1
An-My Lê
Abstract/Artist's Statement
This work explores the intersection of and the tension between the concrete and virtual realms in which our lives unfold.
The project begins with the online correspondences between two people. We are brought into the private world and the interiority of a relationship set in the very public and vast realm of the internet. The ethereal medium of these exchanges amplifies the characters’ ability to fantasize—to create a reality outside the constraints of the conditions of their lives.
Nonetheless, the relationship between the interlocutors, their shared experience, maintains an emotional realness. In many ways, their conversations in the space of the internet feel more intimate, more true. The only difference is that they are not spoken, but appear in text on a screen.
The photographs and texts here seek to bring together the imagined and the real, the intangible and the tangible, the emotional and the corporeal. While these two realities are often put into opposition, for these individuals, it seems that they coalesce into one lived experience. Still, shifting between these spaces leaves them unsettled and unsatisfied. The characters each have to contend with either having faith in the truth of their experience or relegating it to the world of invention.
Ultimately, the work bridges material and immaterial worlds to create a new space in which the real and fantasy can coexist. The emotional becomes part of a landscape of people and things, and they themselves become fragments of an interior world. This new world transcends the limits of the actual and instead desires the authentic.
Open Access Agreement
On-Campus only
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Daniszewski, Anna, "I hear the internet is wonderful in January" (2015). Senior Projects Spring 2015. 222.
https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/senproj_s2015/222
This work is protected by a Creative Commons license. Any use not permitted under that license is prohibited.
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