Evan White Transparent Identities: Women’s Roles in the Church Creative Assignment 2: Andres Serrano

My work was inspired by Andres Serrano and here is a couple links to his work on the web:

http://rogallery.com/serrano_andres/andres_serrano-biography.html

http://andresserrano.org

This series of photographs that I have created depicts the often forgotten and missing roles that women, living in heavily religious families or communities, are sometimes subjected to. Women throughout human history have dealt with patriarchal power from the church and other institutions that have attempted to control the destiny and overall well being of women. Although institutions such as these have progressed in social understanding, there is still a void that has not gone away, in which women do not have a voice in some religious practices. I have attempted to illustrate these forgotten voices in the church by focusing in on the surrounding, especially on pieces of religious iconography,  while leaving the subject out of focus. By doing this I have emphasized the missing identity that many women have and feel through disconnection from religion, due to a lifestyle or choice that religion deems as unholy. This personal struggle, which I have attempted to depict is linked through form of light and color. The light through the darkness symbolizes the personal spirituality that prevails through the darkness of religious dogma. It is light that binds together these images and the subject together through the stark darkness of the settings, in which I shot them in. The Influence for these images came from a contemporary photographer named Andres Serrano.

Andres Serrano’s work over all captures the forgotten voices of modern life but the collection that influenced my series of work is one, in which he titled “Body Fluids.” This work consisted of iconic images that were submerged in urine and other images that depicted blood as form. The images submerged in urine, particularly the infamous “Piss Christ,” is one that influenced my color choice and the way I shot my subject. I used a long shutter speed to give my subject a ghostlike appearance and used candlelight in most of my images to link them together against a very dark background, except in my last image which used natural light that was tinted orange and yellow. Andres Serrano used a red, orange, and yellow color palette to display religious iconography such as the crucifix and the virgin mary, much like I did with my series, to evoke literal representations of what these images instill in our minds. The function that I created through my images is one that displays the darkness that organized religion has placed upon women and the burning personal spirituality within women of faith that is inseparable from a woman’s being. Serrano depicts the subconscious instinct that is often associated with his works on religious iconography. Although I did not process my photographs as radically as Serrano did, my work is inseparable from his influence but also bears a mysterious atmosphere, which differs from Serrano. Women in the church is a subject that is often forgotten and through this series I have captured this it as well as I could through my own personally creative proclivities.