So I’m still very much behind on keeping my blog up to date on the work I’ve been doing. Another semester has passed and I haven’t finished showing work from the semester before. Well, here it is, the last of the work from spring semester 2010.
In the photo dept we have to take a junior seminar class which functions similarly to senior thesis in the sense that we work on a single body of work for the whole semester. For my project I chose to finally culminate all of the work I’ve been doing with optics and the way I see without the aid of glasses or contacts. Below is my artist statement for the project:
Transformation, change, perception. When the simplest of differences can alter your experience.
I have taken photographs of objects and instances that I encounter daily, usually without notice. The one element that has been altered is that I am seeing them without the full capacity of sight. By removing my glasses I have the opportunity to reinvent the world.
The text paired with the images allows the viewer a glimpse into the new reality I have created. Without the words the image is a blurred version of the commonplace but with them, they can understand how impaired sight is not always a hindrance, but a way to heighten our interpretation of the everyday.
And some of the images:
Rachel Verhaaren is a photographer originally from Long Island, New York. She now resides in Baltimore where she attends the Maryland Institute College of Art. Her recent work analyzes human and mechanical optical perception.