Independent Project

My independent project is complied of a series of photographs dealing with the different stages of our lives and the way we express these stages outside of the use of language. It shows how a snapshot of one certain act, expression, embrace, or physical suggestion can allude to the emotions we feel in certain stages of our lives. And, how through our actions rather than our language we revisit these different stages of our lives in our journey of growing.

The first image, Boy in the Sand, conveys the struggles we endure as children when trying to grow up. How our young bones can take the falls that teach us, and persevere to try and try again until we learn to do the tasks that we will later deem as easy. In this photo, the boy struggles and falls to the ground to catch a ball almost the size of his body. In photographing this boy he fell down over and over again, never giving up until he successfully caught the ball. Later in life, catching a ball this size will come easy for him, but in this photograph we see the learning process when young isn’t always easy.

The next image out of my project I have posted, The Release, shows the joy we have in the acceptance of all the stages in our life and the action of the subject hitting the piñata shows we are never too old to experience the joys of youth. While the child sees the adult as somewhat as a separate species, the adult views the child as a memory.

The Last image I have posted, the cycle, seeks to provoke the idea of Just as when we were young we were taken care of, we grow up to be the caretakers and in a sense return to the childhood we remember by sharing it with another.

I feel the images are able to allow the viewer to be empathetic with them as they can relate to all these different stages of life and also show how sometimes the use of language is completely unnecessary to convey and express these emotions and experiences associated with these stages. The pictures are our unspoken words on our reflection of our lives.