Date of Award
12-2008
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Fine Arts (MFA)
Legacy Department
Visual Arts
Committee Chair/Advisor
Wrangle, Anderson
Committee Member
Cross , Sydney
Committee Member
Feeser , Andrea
Committee Member
Grier , Susan
Abstract
This exhibition addresses reconciliation. Through the journey of understanding we are
able to either pass through our negative experiences or we can choose to accept that they
are what they are. Through the placement of images the viewer is brought through this
passage to a threshold for crossing from discomfort to reconciliation. At 40'x50' these
photographs have become environments that viewers become immersed in. When I
begin to make my images I have not yet fully realized the final photograph and there are
several camera controls that I utilize to complete my images. When I place an object in
my image I do so to speak to dislocation. The object found in an unpredictable location
creates an air of anticipation or unexpected outcome. Photographing in the South affords
me the opportunity to more easily embrace these feelings in my work. In this exhibition a
menacing atmosphere can pervade the entire region as trees, vines and water
passageways silently lurk in the Southern Gothic I am drawn to. In my quest for images
that truly speak to this ideology of contradictions I have looked to other sources of
enlightenment and understanding. In the Wabi-Sabi conventions of beauty and all things
impermanent we find an aesthetic and ideal that aligns itself with the Southern Gothic
tradition. In line with Sally Gall I am drawn to places that speak to mystery and yet also
exude a picturesque quietude. Like Sally Mann, I work from the ideology that the
Southern Gothic sensibility embraces the concept that love emerges from pain and loss
and that this then becomes memory. We all have a past to reckon with and through these
photographs the viewer has a window to that opportunity to reconcile his or her own
pasts and presents.
Recommended Citation
Wright, Shannon, "PASSAGE" (2008). All Theses. 493.
https://tigerprints.clemson.edu/all_theses/493