I have been lost, not in the sense of maps or placements and home, but lost within the self. Sometimes treading water, sometimes drowning in the dark depths. The biggest question that I ask myself is "Where am I going?" I am a mother to two very different children. The sense of future is vast for them, mountains can be moved with inspiration, dedication, and kindness. But within the daily steps towards a child's adulthood, the adult, had hit a wall. That vast future that I had known in my younger years was suddenly so narrow, within my own mind, that I didn't even have room to stretch my chin in a new direction. And then Covid. So now where do I stand? In an uncertain world with an uncertain mind, trying so hard to revitalize a person who no longer exists. My solution, start smashing the walls within my mind. The past is done, still influencing, but never changing. Step 1: get out into the world again. So, Hello, I'm back. Slightly begrudgingly, but willing to take the small steps needed to create and move forward. The steps needed to expand my direction and open the doors to a new sense of self. I know that this will begin with speaking to an empty room, but that emptiness will be the sounding board that will shape the conversations down the road. Because that is all I really want, conversation. Conversations shaped from a split moment in time captured and shared that contain a thousand unspoken words.
After the Wedding 007 Through my photographic work I am dissecting my ideas of memory and how the past, present, and future blend together into a single moment, or frame. When moments are experienced, they are captured into our memories through the original “eye.” You could call this the eye of childhood or inexperience. There is an innocence and excitement in seeing everything as new. As we grow older our “eyes” change. They are changed by our experiences, gained knowledge, and our moral lessons. When the moments are re-experienced, by recalling, they are interpreted through a new “eye.” I believe that this re-experiencing of a memory forever changes the original moment. The moment can no longer be experienced through the veil of innocence, it has been pushed through a screen of all the moments’ in-between then and now, not only changing how we recall it but changing the memory itself. A blending of eyes if you will. Through my artistic practice I use these thoughts and ideas to create visual representations of my own memories. Sometimes bold and simplistic moments and then others, muddied moments with all the thoughts, emotions, and merged recollections. I look to the camera to show the effects of the different eyes in our lives. Each camera has a different way of recording the scenes around us. Be it the mechanisms or refinement used in the creation of the lenses, or the simple knowledge of the age of the camera. Two images of the same setting captured from two different cameras will not return the same results, much like how two different people will have two different experiences of the same moment. By using different cameras I am capturing images through different eyes. I call them memory-lines. |
AuthorCarly Petrie Artistic Photographer at C. Petrie Photography ArchivesCategories |