Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Concept: Broken to Beautiful

The list of things available to photograph is practically endless. Subjects such as people, places, buildings and nature are usually on the top of the list. Almost everyone who has owned a camera has at some point taken a picture of a sunset. With photography, it can be difficult to be original. I realized that people always take pictures of beautiful things. Waterfalls, kittens, and flowers. All beautiful, and all somewhat easy to photograph because the subject makes up for an average composition or a slightly underexposed photo. I want to challenge myself. I want to photograph the ugly. I want to photograph objects that are broken and useless, things that people want to throw away. My vision is to take pictures of things that have lost their purpose and by manipulating the photos on the computer, I will show the subjects in a new light. I will give them a purpose, to be art, hung on a wall (hopefully) and seen by people. These objects can be anything: a broken down truck, and abandoned barn, a cracked vase or a chair that is missing a leg. My hope is for the viewer to see themselves when they look at the objects and realize that no one is broken beyond repair. Going from broken to beautiful, it's the story of my life.

While at camp last week I saw these old inner tubes behind a cabin. I want to experiment more with Photoshop, but this is an example of what my project would be like.

1 comment:

  1. I love the idea. It is a common theme (which isn't bad) so there are a lot of classic photographers to look at for this subject. There are so many photo-ops of this type out there to get. I was thinking the other day that the piles of junk people put on the curb for trash pickup would make a good subject.

    Walker Evans , Lee Friedlander all did things like this.

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