Month: May 2018

My project focuses on the City of Easton, and some of its iconic places. Would you know what you were looking at if I only showed you part of the picture? What if the photo was out of focus? My project relies on the viewer having some knowledge of Easton, which I expect from most Lafayette College students. Many of the focuses of my photos are places Lafayette students frequent all the time, or are scenes they see often when in downtown Easton. The project  tries to convey some of the more iconic pieces of a building, business, or scene from Easton.

The project is a take on the famous photographer Daido Moriyama’s style of photography. The photos are edited in black and white, with a high-contrast theme. Noise is added to create a texture effect that shows even more after printing. That is where the resemblance stops though, as Moriyama’s subjects were mundane aspects of Japan, while mine are the iconic places in Easton.

Update: This project can also been seen as making the typical small city/urbanized area of America anonymous. By taking out specific features that set aspects of Easton apart from other cities like it, the viewer can see the photos as taken from any small, urbanized area in America.

There are two major themes of this project: isolation and struggle. I wanted to depict my subjects as being exhausted by their struggle, so in some photos they are leaning against a wall or have their legs pulled defensively to their chest. I often use ghostly images made with long exposure shots in this project to express the idea that people who are embroiled in a battle with depression are often spectres of their healthy selves. In their isolation caused by depression, they have diminished presence in the spaces they used to inhabit with their classmates, friends, and family. There is also a lot of darkness in these photos that suffocates the inside of the frame to isolate the subject in their space, again to demonstrate this theme of isolation.

 

Depression has been a constant theme in my life in the last year and half as I have witnessed many people around me struggle. Those who struggle with depression can assume that they are alone, that nobody cares if they live or die and that there is no way out of their pain. I have seen friends fight these battles alone, often telling nobody and locking themselves into their rooms and locking friends out of their lives. However, whatever the cause of this sort of loneliness and isolation, it takes two things to remain: the person to say nothing and for us not to listen. The fight happens behind closed doors, and it is the responsibility for the afflicted to reach out and for us to momentarily put our own problems to the side to grab their hands and pull them through to the other side.

 

I chose to make this photography project for a number of reasons. It was a therapeautic process for me to relive episodes of suffering in my life and to create something from them. My photographs are a visual representation of the suffering and trauma that I have faced in the last couple years of my life. I wanted to relate a visualisation of what these events can feel like when dealing with anxiety, depression, and panic disorders. Some of the events from this time in my life are distant, foggy memories due to their traumatic nature and so I wanted to evoke the same emotions from those times while developing a narrative.  I decided to include dialogue in a text format to further convey the substance of my content and stylistically, there is a movie-like feel to some of my images which I relate to the movie-like aspects of my real life. In recent years alone I have been in a dangerous car crash, was closely tied to a high school suicide, witnessed a family member experience psychosis and mania, had my life threatened, had my heart broken, stood along side my Dad as he fights cancer (now for the third time), had my love for soccer ripped apart and slowly sewn together again, and have obtained an assistance animal to help cope with my mental illnesses and enjoy life in a beautiful way. This was an empowering project in that I have yet to fully heal from all of these life events, but I was able to help further that process in analyzing meaning in memories for each photo. It has helped me remember the worst of life and helped me appreciate the best of life, and how far along I have come. Photography has been a huge help in growing as a person and I am thankful to have a medium to communicate feelings and ideas which I am unable to with words. I believe there is a way for everyone to relate to my work in that it is a raw vision of suffering and pain, something we all experience. Pain, Anxiety, and Depression are all ugly in nature and I did not want to shy away from showing ugliness in my work. I believe while certain things are difficult to look at and process, it is vital to acknowledge them for what they are. We all have authentic and personal experiences of suffering whether we like to actively think about them or not. I have found in my life experience that confronting these experiences head on has made me love myself more as a person and it has helped me be more like who I want to be.

Brendan Mulligan

Artist Statement

This photograph series aims to emphasize emotions and the passage of time. With a recent scare to my dog’s life, I sought to bring him to our closed beach club at least one more time. Fortunately, he recovered fully and was able to enjoy himself. Of course, my parents and I also enjoyed our trip to the beach, and we were sure to remind ourselves how lucky we were to still spend time with our dog. While there, I sought to capture what my dog’s life was like, how we cared for him and tried to let him live a good life. The photos I took do I believe capture a feeling of life, as journeying to the beach when it is quiet reminds my family to reflect on the many summers we have spent there and the passage of our lives. The sights of the beach that is usually crowded, warm and loud being cold, windy, and quiet also creates a unique mood of reverence in those there, so as not to disturb the peace. Even as my dog ran and played with a tennis ball, the serenity was unbroken by him, as he made little sound. I knew that taking my parents and dog to the deserted beach as I had several times before would provide ample opportunity for photographs that communicated an emotional mood from which to think about life.

I use photography as a way to isolate and deconstruct — I like having objects, environments, and people appear to be in their own constructed spaces. After taking multiple sets over the past couple months, I realized that I have a habit of capturing seemingly natural movements and moments over the course of what may look like a short amount of time (an hour, an afternoon, or even a few minutes). I’ve also noticed that masculinity and vulnerability have been common themes in my work. When initially approaching this project, I knew that I wanted to continue building on the themes of masculinity and vulnerability, but I also knew that I wanted to introduce another: sexuality.

Along with the theme of sexuality came my decision to include nudity. One of my personal goals for this project is to shock any audience that will see just how uncensored the photographs are. I didn’t want nudity just for nudity’s sake though — I wanted use it as an attempt to make the audience as vulnerable as the subjects in the photographs. It’s one thing just to look at men who present vulnerability, but it’s another thing to look at men who command the audience to share that vulnerability with them.

 

Beatriz Rios is the proud mother of Annalysia De’Jesus and Kailia Orendach. She got pregnant with Annalysia two weeks after her 16th birthday and got pregnant with Kailia two years later on a one night stand. She refers to Kailia’s father as “sperm donor” and rarely ever talks to Annalysia’s father who she dated for 3 years. The only time she does talk to him is to retrieve a child support check which is a meger $36 a month. “That wasn’t even enough to pay for diapers for a week” said Beatriz. She has single handedly raised these two kids with no help from anyone except for the government. Ever since the young age of 16, she has been on various government programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). At first she received $400 a month being an unemployed student. Determined to give her children the best life she could, she went on to finish high school while raising a child, applying for government programs, and visiting food banks. Afterwards, she went on to community college and is now about to graduate from an online college and received her bachelor’s degree. The entire time she went to community college, she had a part time job where she received minimum wage and an addition $400 per month from the government. Since graduating, she now works a full time job where she receives an additional .50 cents. This additional .50 cents has resulted in a new SNAP budget of $190 per month. “We don’t live we sustain.” She skips meals for her kids and sometimes has to put them to bed hungry. The only way she manages to keep pushing forward is because she knows she has a hidden budget. She has a fiance she has been engaged with for the past 7 years. His additional budget is the only reason she has been comfortable with pursuing promotions and better job offers. The only reason they have not gotten matties is because if they did they would lose all of the current benefits. “We are poor, but to them we are rich.” Beatriz is a mother. Beatriz is a mother who loves her two children.

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