Dangerous Wands

I Hate Being A Grownup

Basically the concept for my final project is fears and obstacles that accompany growing up and being an adult. These include things like fear of change, fear of being forgotten, fear of failure, etc. It was an attempt to show that you don't always have to give up your childish hopefulness while pretending to be an adult. At least I hope everyone else is pretending because if you all have it figured out I clearly missed something important.

Strip

Over Thanksgiving break I had gone with my best friend to Las vegas, Navada. Having gone to las Vegas and the strip about two times a year I knew I wanted to go and use the strip as my project. At first I wanted to document the happenings of the Strip, but after looking at the photos I had I realized I wanted to go in a different direction. I wanted to put street performers from the Strip with images that document the Strip itself. I changed them to black and white to help bring a journalistic feeling to them and also a paparazzi feeling.

Hands

For this project I chose to photograph different peoples hands all doing something different, but common to activities we do everyday. I wanted to show the delicate form of a hand, even when it's doing something common like texting, or creating something beautiful by drawing, or even something simple like holding another hand, resting on a surface, or holding an object. 

To create these images I chose not to instruct anyone. I kept my camera close at home for when people were just doing random things around my house and also took my camera with me to a dinner with friends.I just let the people around me do what ever they were doing and I'd grab my camera and start taking pictures of their hands when I saw an opportunity. A couple of the images are me telling them to just do 'something'  with their hands, but most of them didn't know I was going to start taking the pictures. I did this because I wanted the poses to be as natural as possible and show the simple, natural beauty of their hand. 

I wanted to point out that people often take things for granted and to draw attention to one of these things. This being our own hands and the many things they do everyday, while also showing how beautiful they can be. People don't often look at hands and see beauty because it is something we are used to having around everyday. Each person's hand have a beauty unique to them. The lines, wrinkles, scars, and "imperfections" are all a part of what makes them so beautiful and unique. 

Victoria Miera - Imprints

For this project, I chose to use a series of superimposed images to convey the reciprocal relationship that exists between humans and the things and experiences we hold closest. I chose to focus on my own personal experiences, and therefore used a combination of self portraits and photographs taken at places and times that have deeply affected and shaped me.

When something truly touches you, it not only leaves it’s mark on you, but you become a part of it as well. Even if only the shadow of a memory of your time with it remains, there is something in both you and it that remembers - that recalls your interaction. The places, objects, people, and moments that make the  most impact on us never leave us - they become a permanent part of us, change us, reside in our hearts and our minds and our souls and make us who we are. We in turn become a part of the things we allow to become part of us, and the cycle continues endlessly. 

Heather Kelly - final project

For this series, I chose to photograph at my dad's house where I grew up. The entire place evokes a lot of nostalgia for me, especially the backyard where I photographed. I wanted to capture some melancholy and sort of a sense that the location where these were taken is in disuse and decrepit. Going home isn't always a positive experience and despite being in a place full of so many fond memories, it can also feel entrapping and dead and no longer like a welcoming home. I wanted this to come across in my photographs and I wanted each of them to bring to mind memories from youth by containing elements that allow each separate image to potentially be part of a larger narrative.

I included different organic imagery in many of my photos, like fruit and a piece of a wasp’s nest, as symbols of how temporary life is and in the case of both the wasp nest and the location in general, how temporary some homes are. One image is of the playhouse I spent a lot of time in as a child, and since I grew older and moved away it had been left untouched for years. The images with bodies in them I used a slow shutter to show movement in order to create an uncanny feeling, as they were shot in the afternoon on a sunny day. I felt like juxtaposing a dark figure with an outdoor daytime environment made the photographs unsettling, and by excluding the face I further obscured the subject and removed its identity.  For the most part with this project I wanted to reminisce about the past and create a reminder of the temporary nature of not only life, but of places and objects that were once familiar and felt like home, but no longer do.

Creative Assignment 3

If you have seen the Disney movie Pocahontas or any other general movie about colonization you know that the “White Man” wants more land and the Native Americans think he is stupid because land is not something to be owned. In her paper “Native American Worldview Emerges” Mary Magoulick wrote that “Americans view land as an object of trade and utility” which she contrasts with the traditional Native American view that land isn’t a commodity to be owned. She writes that Native Americans have a much deeper respect for nature, land and the earth in general as it was here before you and will be here after you. This worldview seems to be more accurate than the American one in my opinion. Many people will be making payments from anywhere between fifteen and forty years to pay off their mortgage; then they will own their house and the land it is on. However when they die if they have no one to leave it to, the state gets it. Sometimes though it is left alone and begins to deteriorate. The construction materials used for a house come from nature anyway (wood from trees, metal is mined from the earth, bricks are made from clay, concrete comes from limestone) and when the house is left alone nature causes it to return back to its natural components. “For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return” Genesis 3:15