Response

Response glimpse into modern society's polarization and paramount need for social acceptance and simultaneous imperative self-isolation. Response explores the exfoliation of social interaction to reveal the heart of the self, experienced in a new way, or perhaps for the first time, by so many in first world countries. It explores a new relationship with the self both welcomed and resisted, and how the turmoil of pandemic is a metaphor for pandemic of the soul. Response was born on a road trip in the peak of the lock-down in April 2020. It was here I explored true isolation in the most desolate parts of the United States. It was in the remoteness of the desert and solidarity with the earth that I began to feel a quiet overcome my soul; I initiated the question of what was in that quiet, and if I relished or detested it. In the forty-plus hours of driving and isolation of camping, I began to have an eidetic visualization of my emotions and the resulting images were conceived. Death Valley is the backdrop for most of the work. When restrictions were lifted I photographed models on greenscreen in the studio and combined them into the desert backgrounds. There are many symbolic elements I photographed in the desert-like discarded air-conditioner parts and rotted bones to parallel the mix of emotions resulting from a time of global quiet. With the growing political and societal estrangement, my concept evolved to explore influences outside the self the effects they have on the psy