Date of Submission

Spring 2023

Academic Program

Photography

Project Advisor 1

Stephen Shore

Abstract/Artist's Statement

First there was Chaos, the gaping abyss. From Chaos came the Earth and soon after darkness and Night, from which came Day and Light. To be her husband, Earth created Sky. They made many children together, the Nymphs of the hills, the Hekatonkheires, the Cyclops, and the Titans. When Earth and Sky’s youngest Titan son Cronus overthrew his father, he castrated him, sending bits of the sky into the sea where Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty was born. Cronus ruled until he himself was overthrown by his own youngest son, Zeus.

See How Man Is Made is a project about a world at the intersection between reality and fantasy. About the liminal space between humans and the natural world we inhabit. In this space lies mythology, a fantasy world created to explain the construction of reality. Mythology is the origin story of humans' relationship to the primordial world as well as to each other. This collection of photos was inspired by Homer's Odyssey and Iliad as well as Hesiod’s Theogony and Works and Days.

Greek Mythology has been a source of fascination for me since early childhood. The power dynamics of family, the world situated as a family, a story to explain the natural world. The all powerful father, overthrown by his youngest son. The sun traveling across the sky, Helios riding his chariot. Personifying human reality (night, day, time, forethought, curiosity, beauty, wind) bridges reality and fantasy in an inspiring way. It allows the human mind to construct the world in terms they can understand and interact with.

The line between portrait and landscape is blurred in this project as humans and nature are in Greek mythology. The people and the places I encounter in reality, in my own world, when viewed through the camera lens, merge, becoming one and the same: essentially, they belong to one another.

I would like to thank Stephen Shore for his limitless insight and keen discernment. His guidance opened up my belief in myself and transformed my photography this year. Thank you to Tanya Marcuse for the wisdom and creativity she has shared with me. Her respect and honesty in the classroom urged me to take myself more seriously, and show myself the respect I required to work hard. Thank you to my mother and father for introducing me to these stories as a young child and for the support and encouragement they have granted me over these last four years.

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