Graduate Thesis Showcase: School of Photography
The Ecstasy of Struggle
by Sara Coleman
Pages: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | next >
Date: May 17th, 2005
Summary, p. 1
My final body of work represents a culmination of nearly two years spent photographing myself and Jamie, my soon to be husband. I have been involved with art throughout my life, and was raised to express myself visually where I could not verbally. Throughout my undergraduate years I experimented with many different media with varying degrees of success. I feel that as I started to mature as an artist it became clear that whatever work I did would revolve around my own perceptions and experiences. I moved from painting to photography near the end of college, and immediately found the medium to be more satisfying to work with than any other I had tried. I decided that an MFA in photography was what I wanted to pursue, which brought me to the Academy.
From the beginning I was drawn to photographing myself. I used myself as a model for every assignment during my first semester of graduate school where possible. As assignments gave way to a push toward individual realization I continued to use myself as subject matter, while beginning to strengthen my perception of form within the picture-plane.
When I encountered the work of John Dugdale, I was inspired to take photographs of Jamie along with myself. Dugdale's images of himself with his partner and with his family were beautiful, and inspired the narrative beginnings of my project. I realize now that most of the influences I mentioned during my midpoint were informing only the point of departure for my work, not the visual elements of the work itself. I will return to this with greater detail later. And so I began to take photographs of Jamie and me.
My interest in romantic relationships and dynamics between couples has existed for a long time. I am fascinated with humankind's persistent search for love despite its cost. I sometimes see love as a sort of magic, other times simply as an act of will. I see it as tragic, sometimes masochistic, but ultimately as being about hope. I believe couples that stay together for the entirety of their lives (and would say it was worth it) must be sensitive to every nuance, must be responsive to each other in a most profound way. I also feel that at least for me, love is an obsession. Over the past two years I have been compelled to make photographs that convey all of the ambivalence and insecurity that I experience in my relationship and in my life. I feel that on some levels this is a shared experience with others who have "been in love". Conversely, the true emotional intimacy between two people can only be understood by outsiders at a superficial level, that is, it can't be felt. I find this profoundly interesting, and I wonder if in making these photographs I have been striving to make the viewer feel what I feel, or at least to clarify for myself what I am feeling. Were it not for Jamie's recent refusal to allow me to photograph him any longer, I could probably go on exploring this narrative further. On the other hand, I feel that my specific formal interests will be explored in depth no matter what subject matter I am shooting, so long as it is important to me and relevant to my life. This is something that has recently come to light for me in reflecting on this project: that a well articulated narrative point of departure is necessary for me to feel motivated and personally drawn to what I am doing.
I feel that it is necessary to differentiate between point of departure and narrative. I have always wanted my narrative to be ambiguous in my images, in part because there is a relation between that idea and literally being an outsider to a relationship. I feel that in much artwork, even that which is heavily narrative, the artist's point of departure is not evident within the imagery. It is typically quite private. In the case with my work, once the viewer has the knowledge of the identities of the figures he or she begins to see what first motivated me to do the work. This is different from seeing how particular elements within an image work narratively. It is really only one dimension of the completed pieces, and my hope is that their merit as works of art lies in their visual accomplishment.