Graduate Thesis Showcase: School of Photography
The Ecstasy of Struggle
by Sara Coleman
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Date: 10/07/03
Time: 12:00 pm
Autobiography
My arrival to where I am now has been preceded by a long history of involvement with the arts. As a child, I was encouraged to draw and paint by my father, who was a painter himself. Throughout my pre-college life I was as involved with art in school as much as was possible. Fortunately a decent budget existed for art and music in my school system, and so well before I entered college I had been introduced to several media, both two and three-dimensional. My decision to study art at Nazareth College in Rochester, New York came naturally as a continuation of what I had been doing all of my life.
Throughout my first three undergraduate years I attended studio classes in everything from figure drawing to weaving. (But never photography) It was in that third year that I really found myself gravitating toward painting. That became my official concentration. During my final year of college, however, I had an elective open and so I decided to take a photography class.
In those first few months with a camera I knew that I had truly found a medium that suited my expressive needs. My teacher in that class, Katherine Hubbard, was a great inspiration to me as an artist and as a woman. The following semester I took a directed study with her and created the body of work that eventually I would submit to the Academy of Art for entry into the MFA program.
From the beginning I primarily shot photographs of myself and the people in my life that I was closest to. Self-representation, in particular, felt incredibly liberating and expanded my relationship to my body as well as to my intellect. I felt that I was delving into the heart of my most personal matters in a way that I hadn't in painting. After I graduated from college I moved to Florida for a year to be with my boyfriend. (Currently my fiance) I knew at that time that I wanted to pursue an MFA in photography, and so it was that I came to the Academy.
Since coming to the Academy of Art my work has evolved in several ways. Many possibilities have been opened to me due to the technical skills I have acquired and those that I continue to obtain. Furthermore, my interests regarding selfhood and womanhood have broadened into a passion for issues surrounding gender identity and equality. It is through this passion and from an intensely personal vantage point that this project will be realized.