July 4th

patriotism+best friend+flash

This July 4th, I spent the day with my best friend and her family along with attendees of their annual Fourth of July Pool Party. For a photographer interested in the portrayal of the American South, the day could not have been more inspiring.

Adolescent boys battled for pool rafts with great ferocity.

Tables were filled with food.

Guests sported red, white, and blue as did the house itself.

But of all the photographs from the day, this was my favorite. My best friend, Leah, stands at attention in stark contrast to her surroundings. The flash has isolated her completely. She is stoic. Making the viewer aware that the photograph was taken on the Fourth of July is important to me. It gives posture and facial expression a context. The joy and festivities of the day are absent in this image, leaving only patriotic duty and component of personal identity.

Leah, July 4, 2010

Hilton Head, SC

A Family Affair

A few weeks ago, my family and I attend my cousin's wedding in Hilton Head. All five of us stayed in one hotel room. My poor father was suffocated by the luggage and trappings of his four women.

I have always found hotels to be fascinating. I am romanced by the glamour of travel and intrigued by the clash of public and private that exists in a hotel. There is an eerie atmosphere to hotels (think The Shining) that I find invigorating. Unfamiliar surroundings put on a hospitable guise. It keeps me constantly on edge. Its as if the whole place is a facade for something more cynical.

Jenna

Daddy

Spring Semester Final

Asphalt

Nothing is capable of such exquisite expression as the human figure. In these photographs, I am interested in the body as a descriptive tool used to speak for its surroundings. A translator of sorts.

These images investigate the intersection of gesture and place. There is no horizon. The expanse of perceived nothingness extends into infinity. Only a single yellow line interrupts the figure as she exists in a painful and melodic interaction with the cracks in the pavement.