Final Project Ideas - Tamyra Thompson

I had the idea of basing my project off of roads, bridges, trials, and other such paths for quite a while. I see a connection between these particular things with life itself, and I really thing this could be strongly and beautifully portrayed through photography.

While out shooting for the previous idea, I stumbled upon this pile of antique, rusted bolts. This somewhat inspired me to photograph the rusty treasures that I have always naturally been drawn to. I have been collecting old items such as these for a while, so I already have quite the collection to work with, but they are also not difficult to find in my area.

Artists

·        Jodie Hulden - http://www.jodiehulden.com/still-life-expanded/

·        Ansel Adams

·        Ellie Davies - https://www.lensculture.com/ellie-davies

·        Mabry Campbell - https://www.lensculture.com/mabrycampbell

·        Anup Shah - https://www.lensculture.com/anup-shah

Artist’s Statements

·        Jodie Hulden’s Left Behind - http://lenscratch.com/2018/05/center-editors-choice-3rd-place-award-jodie-hulden/

These photographs were taken in Bodie, California, an abandoned gold rush mining town. As the mining opportunities evaporated over the decades, the inhabitants had to forsake their lives there and leave behind many of their belongings and their dreams. While the photographs are intimate tableaus of everyday existence, they also tell an incomplete tale and are a forlorn testimony to the vagaries of life. They also speak to the strength of the human spirit in times of hardship and loss, of humanity's ability to continue on amidst the uncertainties of living and to forge ahead with new dreams.

·        Jodie Huldlen’s Zion in Winter - http://www.jodiehulden.com/new-gallery/

These photographs were taken in February of 2017 as part of the Artist-in-Residence Program at Zion National Park. They show a hushed and more intimate side of Zion instead of the classic, dramatic scenes that usually depict the canyon lands of the American West. We are used to seeing grand vistas of the ancient canyons, the red rocks under brilliant blue skies, the humbling and soaring magnificence of the peaks and narrow slot canyons. In winter, however, Zion displays a quieter side with cooler and more muted colors and the soft transitions between them. Winter reveals the deeper stillness that is always present in this beloved landscape if one can look closely and underneath the obvious.

·        Ellie Davies’s Between the Trees - https://www.lensculture.com/ellie-davies?modal=project-96216

What is a forest? Is it the trees or the space that exists between them? A forest is what exists between its trees, between its dense undergrowth and its clearings, between all its life cycles and their different time-scales…A forest is a meeting place between those who enter it and something unnameable and attendant… Something intangible and within touching distance. Neither silent nor audible.*

These images explore the nature and meaning of ‘Forest’ by considering the physical experience of standing alone inside the woods; the eerie and captivating sensation that time has slowed down and that the forest and everything within it exists in a different state. Somehow set apart from our usual perception of linear time the wind drops, the air cools, all is quiet and still and the forest draws in. To enter this other place is to accept a slowing of time and a shift in perception.

The swirling, hanging and drifting smoke allows us to observe time moving at an almost imperceptible pace, and to focus on the interior space that is very much part of ‘the forest’, guiding the eye away from the trees and allowing it to linger on this ‘betweenness’. Suspended and still, the smoke fills the spaces between the trees reflecting this physical experience: the palpable and brooding cognisance of the forest, the muffled and flattened sound, the prickling sense of heightened awareness. The mist fills the gaps to show the spaces between, as if we can slip through and escape t