Vision is shaped by the time in which we live, and life today can no longer be distinguished from the influences of mechanical and technological means of perception. The knowledge of our world is received primarily through the camera. Photography, video, television, film, and the internet all use images based on the camera. These forms construct our media. Most of our experience is mediated through one or more of these devices of perception. As our environment becomes increasingly mediated, so does our experience. Fragmentation occurs in the way we experience and construct meaning from this contemporary experience. My work is a direct reaction to this environment.

Photography is a language that I use to describe my experience. Photography, like any language, has a grammar, syntax, and vocabulary. By manipulating the syntax and grammar of photography, I explore and express the concept of fragmentation. I use digital technology to manipulate this language. The language of photography comes with certain qualities and characteristics. Photography is a time-based medium. Each photograph is a piece of time and space. It is associated with and represents our memory. Photographs also represent the real. They become symbols of the real. We save and collect photographs in albums, boxes, and now on hard drives. We take photographs to help us remember. They are a way to document and record our lives. When viewing photographs they often cause us to reflect on our own lives and experience.

The modern view of technology, photography especially, is that through mechanical and technological devices of perception we will be able to have a clear and concise vision of the world. Photography sees beyond the human eye, seeing further. My work challenges this modern concept, placing my work in a postmodern stance. My work is about a vision of time. Time for us is set in a linear narrative. We are born and we someday die. Both are distinct moments in the timeline of existence.

The images I create represent how we structure our lives in relation to memory and experience. The formal qualities of my work force a reexamination of time, in relation to perception. I am dismantling the structure and the importance of the single image, and resorting it though the technology of Photoshop, giving it a new structure. I find that my work restructures this linear timeline into a more organic form. This new form represents how we see through the collective of our experience. The new fragmented form disrupts the view of one moment to a multiplicity of viewpoints. Through the dialogue the viewer may contemplate the concepts of memory and its relationship to meaning and experience. My work reveals how complicated memory informs meaning. The fragmentation shows the memory is composed of multiple and often contradictory perceptions. Understanding meaning obtained from photography, and other technological forms of perception, in this way shows that the modernist notion of photography is incomplete. My work reveals photography’s capacity to withhold and thwart clear and concise meaning. I find this to be interesting.

Fragmentation also occurs in the language we have created to explain and talk about art. The past 30 years have deconstructed the vocabulary we use to a degree that we now have a fragmented dialogue. We are not quite sure what signs and symbols to trust or mistrust. This allows art to explore and incorporate all forms, styles, and concepts of the past, thus my work is postmodern.

PROCESS

The process of my work is as dynamic as the work itself. The beginnings of my work came from a mistake made with another project. A random double exposure inspired the process. After analysis of this image, I became interested in the use of multiple images. I found that the best way to create other images in the same fashion was through the use of Adobe Photoshop. Photoshop provided more choices and made the layering of imagery more flexible. At this point the archive of images I had accumulated changed. I started to look at everything in edges, pieces, and fragments. It was this change, from working within Photoshop that I started to look at fragmentation. From this the conceptual considerations were a direct result from the process of working.

My images start with the selection of a few photographs. I review the work I have shot. Reviewing negatives, slides, proofsheets, prints, and digital images. Through this process of looking at prior photographs I look through my past. I review my own experience. This process always causes reflection on my life and its meaning. Often photographs I select to use are ones that were created or used for different purposes. They now, through time and reflection, have taken on new and different meaning. These images are put into the computer using scanners or digital cameras. I am self appropriating the events of my life to create a completely new narrative. Once the images are compiled in the computer I begin to piece the images together within Photoshop.

Photoshop gives almost limitless possibilities of manipulation. The main characteristics that I control are the way that the different images interact in their levels of opacity and translucency. I find that the translucency gives a formal reference to the photographic, especially filmic. It makes reference to how memory and time can vary in intensity. It also shows how memory, time, and experience can overlap. I find that these qualities of photography parallel the qualities of memory. Some memories are sharp and others blurry. This is especially true when they overlap and combine. Formal concerns are explored through the use of color, shape, line, and texture. I work to make the images interesting in both the formal and conceptual characteristics.

The problem of adding too much content to the image is the greatest challenge. Too much content causes so much fragmentation that meaning is destroyed and all that is achieved is confusion. For an image to become successful there has to be a balance between the form and content. The solution to this challenge is to begin with a limitation within the selection of photographs to use for any given image. I work in a similar fashion to that of an abstract painter. I add a photograph, react to that photograph in some way, and then add another photograph, etc. I may react to the photograph on a formal basis or a conceptual basis. I find that if both can be considered the final image becomes stronger in its ability to create a multiplicity of meaning. I feel that good art has a balance of form and content and that has the ability to create a multiplicity of meaning. Many of the selected images were not profound events or memories in my life. I found that these images represent the everyday passage of time. I feel that it reveals how transparent memory becomes in how it informs and influences the present.

THE ANALYSIS OF AN IMAGE

I will explain how I constructed the image “Over the Ocean”. This image began by going out and photographing my world. I chose to photograph on Trax the local light rail system in Salt Lake City, Utah. From this work I edited a sequence of photographs depicting a woman looking out the window in thought. When seeing this photograph I immediately thought of another photograph that was similar in both form and content. I had a similar experience on a bus in Athens, Greece. I found that photograph and began to place the two together. I found that the gesture and lighting to be similar of both women. I found an interesting union and convergence of visual planes that met in the middle of the image. I proceeded to add more photographs from the Trax sequence. There was a man in a red hat that was repeating through this sequence. I found that red hat to be a formal element that helped move the eye through the image. Repetition also made reference to how we often experience the repetition of images and messages in our mediated environment. The opacity and translucency of all the different elements was altered to give the image some depth and surface. Fragments of color and texture were put into the image to provide balance and helped obscure and reveal different parts of the image.

After the basic image was constructed I let it sit and came back to it later. This time away from the work gave me time to let the meaning incubate. As I studied the image I came to understand that the two different moments were about the same thing. They are about how we experience the time on public transit. I started to think about what I think about when I look out the window. I found that the title and the handwriting created a bridge that connected the two experiences. The title came from a song. The song gave me the feeling of looking out a window. It creates a feeling of reflection and contemplation. I felt that this was important to the meaning of the image. These two images placed together also connect the two spaces, Salt Lake City, Utah and Athens, Greece. I felt that the handwriting provided the same feeling and connection but did so in a more literal way.

Handwriting is associated with record keeping, and journals. When a journal is reviewed, reflection and contemplation result. This is a similar experience with the review of photographs. I found that this to be a cycle within my process. The handwriting also provides a personal reference

CONCLUSION

The process offers endless possibilities. The images selected for this thesis explore content associated with an urban environment, mass transit, public spaces, and how we personally live with and within these spaces. Through different subject matter new insights may be discovered.

I have chosen these images because they reflect a direct involvement to my own experience of living in a mediated environment. This work shows the elusive nature of communication. It causes us to reflect on our own experience and how through communication we construct meaning. It engages us to look at the role of photography, and other media, in the cause and effect of a fragmented experience, and ultimately why Art is important. For it is through Art that these ideas are presented, explored, confronted, and expressed.