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Artist Statement Environmental Portraiture is a photograph of a person which narrates his/her life by the surroundings. As a photographer, I have always been interested in photographing people and expressing some part of their lives through a photograph. I decided to make environmental portraits because of my genuine interest and curiosity about other people’s lives. To me, people are the most interesting subject to photograph, because so many meanings can be interpreted. There is so much detail involved with one person. I feel that environmental portraiture is the best way to capture this.
I have photographed people who are close to me, such as my parents, close friends, and relatives. An important part of environmental portraiture is knowing your subject and allowing them to be comfortable with you so that they can be captured honestly. Even though some of the subjects I will end up shooting will not be as intimate as my immediate family, I will still strive to get to know them on a level that will convey a sort of intimacy in my work. Intimacy will not be possible if I do not connect to my subjects on a personal level. My subjects will mostly be from the south and lower –to-middle-class, simply because these are the people with whom I am most intimate. I also do not wish to branch out from this category because it is also a part of my life, being born and raised in Arkansas as the daughter of a preacher. I feel that I can better capture subjects who all have this essence of the south in common. It will help my work to be seen more cohesively by the viewer. I feel most comfortable shooting fellow southerners simply because it is the life with which I am most familiar.
I want my work to be seen as capturing how a person’s surroundings define who they are. So much more can be said about a person whose portrait is made in her bedroom, rather than in a professional photography studio. As humans, we place great importance on our surroundings and possessions, and they do define us in some way or another. This is part of being human, and there is no escaping it. I am trying to capture this essence of humanity.
I want the viewer to be interested in my work because, in a way, each portrait will be relating to the viewer, simply by the fact that it is a portrayal of a person in his/her natural surroundings, being placed with an environment that defines them. Since each person is defined by their environment, the viewer can relate to my work by thinking of their surroundings and how they are defined. Viewers will notice similarities and differences, thus forming a union between the people portrayed in the work and the viewers themselves.
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