Pictures by Lee Friedlander

an artist statement from Elisa Paloschi

I use photography as a means of self-expression – I make pictures for myself, to identify with hidden qualities of my character, to better understand my reality, and to express my interpretation of the world around me. A clearer understanding of myself and of my world allow me to explore fragments of life as an abstract form, and also to interact with people I would otherwise not be able to engage with. My goal is to use my camera like Alice’s rabbit hole, to open an unexplored world, a place of curious self-expression, but also a world of new relationships, new chances new beginnings and most importantly new stories.

My choice of subject comes from a place of intuition and is fuelled by an impetuous desire to partake in the stories that unfold around me. I seek the unknown and I look for the light within the shadows, the stories that are not at first obvious and the uncommon in the common. I photograph people in their environments because I am curious of what lays behind their eyes, where they have been and where they hope to go. My photography evokes the passage of time. I use slow shutter speeds and double exposures to explore the nuances of movement and the modulation of time as it passes from past to present to future. Recently I have begun to work with landscapes, attempting to illustrate abstract, evocative scenery as a motif to epitomize the idea of imagined space, a reminder that what I create through the viewfinder is only real to me.

I am inspired to compose by the contrast of light and dark, while I use the changing light of day to arouse the mood of my dreams. Strangely, colour has appeared in my work, slowly and without intention, concealing the black and white imagery of my past. This colour conjures images of my favourite foods – mangoes, chocolate and spicy masala chai, and surprises me. Gone with the black and white is my concerned with documenting a story, rather I find myself interested in the results of immersing myself in the story and recording my own reactions and actions to my world. The photographs of Faces and Places come from that immersion.

Elisa Paloschi

The sentence in bold is the sentProxy-Connection: keep-alive
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ce that I think is most important to the artist statement. This Proxy-Connection: keep-alive
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because in this part she is talking about why she decided to photograph in a certain way rather then the meaning she is trying to convey.

Some of my photos

Change the world

So everyone wants to change the world in some way and I'm no different. My hope is that through my actions and art not only will people want to question what governs them but who governs them as well. I find it interesting how much squabbling goes on in politics and how many people play the blame game. People seem to think that blaming a problem on someone will solve it. And yes it might get that person out of that position of authority but it does nothing to fix the damage already done. I also find it interesting how public servants are given many benefits and often the laws they pass don't apply to them. By having my work focus on the surreal I'm hoping to open up peoples minds to the possibility of something else. That what they see in front of them might just be someone else s imagination running wild. It is my hoping that by having my work border on the edge of surreal people might begin to question what is real and valid in the world around them.

Koen Demuynck my inspiration

So I found Koen Demuynck a couple years ago and have enjoyed his work ever since. The reason I like him is because his work borders on the surreal. Almost everyone of his images deals with fantasy and impossibility. And its not imposible in the sense of it being unatainable but rather that no one in their right mind could ever be found actually doing the things depicted in his images. What I also like about his work is the little details found in each photo. Almost evey photo of his presents has a vary obvious joke. However, if you look around the image, you can almost always find other random jokes hiding in little details.


http://www.koendemuynck.com/

My photo interests

Up till now most of my photos have been of outside scenes with a slight twist to them. An example of this would be my night photography series. In this series I decided to take pictures of abandoned objects. However instead of doing this during the day I shot at night which added a couple extra elements to the images and making them feel a bit surreal. Even with the various themes of each of my series the one element that can be consistently found in my work is the use of lines. These lines are made from assorted objects that they seem to bring the image together by allowing the eye to follow them. This semester my goal it to border on the strange and unreal. For a long time I have been interested in the idea of twisting what we perceive as reality. I hope to explore this idea by creating a series based on peoples leftover imagination. So basically thoughts or ideas that come to life after the person has left.