Thesis Synopsis

The beginning of my thesis project has already been quite a roller coaster ride. During my first quarter of research I started off on a project that I began to realize would not only fall outside my financial means but also require much more time then simply two more quarters of school. Because I was excited about the project initially it unfortunately took me until the end of the first quarter to admit this to myself and thus I am now practically back a square one. Over winter break I was able to spend a little more time shooting freely, which I believed helped me to see more clearly what my new path will be. I started off shooting colors. That was it. Plain and simple. I wanted to show the viewer the multitude of color that surround us on a day to day basis that we often times overlook because it is always present. Through the shooting I did for this idea I began to realize that the images I found most interesting were the ones that completely abstracted the object I was shooting making it hard for the viewer to recognize not only the function of the object but even as far as making the object itself unrecognizable. I began then, to connect my fascination with these images to the fascination I have with photography's place in the Fine Art world in general. Coming from a background of practically zero Fine Art classes and rather one of specifically photography classes, my transition into art school was in some senses a slap in the face. To me photography was always something that represented the "real" and showed you what your eye would see if you were there in that exact moment. Coming into art school I began to realize the many different ways the camera can be used and that it doesn't always have to show you an exact replication of a person, place, or thing. It is this idea that I plan on examining through my thesis project. I would like to shoot images that not only make the function of the subject and the object itself unrecognizable but also images that might make the end result unrecognizable as a photograph. Because my new idea has completely shifted and has 100% nothing to do with what I spent last quarter shooting I will have to start my research from scratch. I plan to first spend time researching the work of other artist both photographers and painters, and arts who use other mediums and choose to work by abstracting their images. I also plan on doing a lot of reading about photography’s place in the Fine Art world, how it fits, how it doesn’t, criticisms against it, and arguments for it. Shooting a lot of images will be another form of research that I will need to concentrate on heavily, as I am pretty much a full quarter behind as of now.
While the pictures below are not an exact representation of the kinds of images I would like to produce they are the ones that caught my eye while taking my initial "color" photos and i think they best exemplify the direction i would like to go in.