Postscript

Media, Culture, Technology

Author: Talia Amorosano

Talia Amorosano enjoys asking hypothetical questions and answering rhetorical questions. Her (slightly) more useful interests include writing and art.

February 7, 2016 / / 2 Comments

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For me, taking and editing photos is a therapeutic experience. After a long day of class, creation and conversation, I take comfort in the thought that at the click of a button I can capture a canvas worth manipulating later. Best of all, the canvas is never blank; it comes ready-made with shapes and forms and structures to work around and within. Especially when editing photos taken at night, when the drama between light and dark is heightened by limited illumination from street and window lights, I enjoy using the composition that already exists as a guideline for where to fade completely to black and where to allow color and light to remain.

With this photo set, I actually aimed to alleviate the tension between seen and unseen elements, either by emphasizing clean lines or showcasing gradual transitions between light and dark. I hope that when a viewer observes these photos, he or she does not feel compelled to strain to see details that are hidden by darkness, but can instead view each image holistically, a testament to editing that successfully naturalized (at times, unnatural-looking) transition zones.

The word “natural” here is confusing. Wouldn’t it be most natural to leave the photos exactly as they were when taken?

Even if the objective answer to that question is “yes,” addressing it leads me to an interesting realization about my own work: my editing was/is intended to make these images—and the world—conform, above all, to my own sense of normalcy. It’s the opposite of world-building; it’s reducing the picture of what already exists into more palatable pieces, where elements, like theatrical props, can be strategically illuminated or shrouded to achieve their maximum aesthetic potential—and I have control of the lights. This is all, of course, illusory, but nevertheless therapeutic.



October 27, 2015 / / 1 Comment

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In public settings, dim, artificially-lit places are usually associated with illicit activity, secrecy, and the frightening unknown. Shadows become real-life homes for imagined fears; dark spaces where terrors become validated just by remaining undiscoverable. However, through photographing within dimly-lit enclosed domestic spaces, I’ve noticed that while these similar lighting conditions retain the ability to obscure and warp visual elements, they often take on unexpectedly positive visual representations, evocative of solitude, introspection, and comfort.

In this photo series, through a muted color scheme, emphasis on negative space, and attention to where elements fall within linear structures, I hope to convey the therapeutic effect of shadowy areas inside naturally-lit indoor spaces. To show that when faced willingly from within a zone of security, the dark is more transcendent than it is terrifying.



April 13, 2015 / / 0 Comments

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There’s something fascinating about decay. Maybe it’s the way  man-made things look as they revert back to their natural states, maybe it’s the idea of the slow but inevitable aging process which is often augmented by neglect, maybe it’s just the thought that everything meets the same end but gets there in different ways. Regardless, there is something aesthetically beautiful about things that are not typically considered aesthetically beautiful. Like when a person is conventionally unattractive, but just has ‘something’ about him, there is a raw character about these objects that would not be visible under a fresh coat of paint.

I chose to use a macro lens while taking these pictures, because (besides the fact that I had just gotten the new lens and was really excited to use it) I wanted to capture these subjects the way someone would capture a conventionally beautiful thing, like a dewdrop on a piece of grass, or a flower petal. I wanted to highlight their tiniest intricacies: a piece of chipped paint, a crack in a piece of wood, a rusty nail.

Throughout the process I noticed that decay caused some subjects to take on the properties of their surroundings, and made others stand out. However, all the subjects that I photographed seemed aesthetically far from how they were originally intended to look. And while all these photographs depict nonliving things, I hope that I was able to capture the nuanced individual lives that time and neglect had given them.



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