Dissonance: My artwork changing in style

As of late, I have started to change my ideas of how to express my issues with my own identity. With some help from Tom though, I got the ball rolling again. I started searching for ways to express my conflict and internal issues in more ways that could still be drawn back to the same ideas of before, with the same concept, but have a totally different face and image makeup. I started thinking of how I could express a separation, an actual view of ‘two of me’ within a piece without starting to become heavily dependant on Adobe Photoshop, and the post-production of my imagery. I thought back to images of past, where I was in a reflection of a glass pane of sorts, but was not pictured in the actual image. My concept of ‘the struggle’, which has been a running theme throughout all of my work here at VCU, stemmed first from these images, and still feel as if they are some of the strongest pieces I have done. Here are a few examples below.

These pieces got me to think of how I could incorporate myself within an image, and be pictured twice in an image, without questions being asked of where the other ‘me’ came from. I then thought how I could change this shot to resemble the state of myself being separated or being dissonant from one me to the other, as if each one of me, the reflection, and the actual, each stood one representing the Kenyan side, and the other representing the American side. The dissonance and separation between the two of me in the image needed to be pictured realistically, but also needed to clearly show a confusion or separation. I finally thought of the idea of me flipping the reflection of me in one of the images from being a picture that makes sense, to one in which the reflection is opposite of what it is supposed to be. For example, the following image correctly shows the reflection of me in a photograph. Now, imagine if I decided to flip the reflection so that I would face the camera, instead of the reflection showing my back, as it so properly should. I would do this by layering another photograph of extreme similarity of me with the opposite reflection in the window, therefore creating an image that shows disconnect between the two of me in the image. I know that this involves a decent amount of Photoshop, however, I feel as if I am not creating a new ‘me’ in the image, I am just taking another photograph of extreme similarity and layering it on top.

Abbas Kiarostami: Artist Blog

Abbas Kiarostami is an artist I recently have discovered, while searching the vastness of the internet. Abbas was born in Tehran, Iran, in 1940, and has worked in both film and photography. What captured me in his pieces is how dramatic he takes his photographs, and they can still be understood as works of concept. His Roads series especially grabbed my attention because I feel a specific connection to that work that he created, being that I feel those photographs of his speak on similar lines that my work does. Here are a few images that I especially find intense.

I feel that these photographs directly speak what I want my photographs to speak to others, because I immediately start looking through my own life at where I am on the road of life, and what struggle is next, or what struggle or 'thing' is holding me back from moving forward.

These photographs are work that I find absolutely inspirational, and I do not want to stop looking at them, because, even in their simplicity, there is a never-ending search for answers to questions, and I look for answers in these pieces for my own life. The work stands as a piece that is uinversally appreciated and understood, as well as having a sense of constant travel and search, as if there is no resting place in the road of life. I feel that in my own work, the reason why I address my own personal issues in the photographs is because I hope that that means I will find a resting place after I sort this major issue that ties me to the past. With this in mind, however, I do feel that part of everyone's journey through life is to find a resting place that can never be gotten, but gets searched for anyway, as a psychological place of rest and peace. That place can be photographed, but I feel that its the search for the impossible, the place of rest, that really tells the story.

http://www.artnet.com/artwork/425974410/118451/abbas-kiarostami-roads-79.html

http://www.artnet.com/artist/9449/abbas-kiarostami.html

http://www.artnet.com/artwork/426014394/425216710/abbas-kiarostami-roads-series.html