Searching for the Sublime

Abstract

Photography is dead and that’s okay. Photography has always had a rather anxious relationship to the world due to its connection to both the commercial and fine art worlds; the latter with greater suspect and criticism, as suggested in Matthew Thompson’s “The Object Lost and Found." The digital technology revolution has permanently altered photography from its analogue past. No longer do professionals need to arduously fine tune the physical print for accurate color balance, optimal sharpness, etc.; the digital camera has finally, and unequivocally, perfected the image and made photography more accessible than ever before. A 2015 study by the Pew Research Group estimates that 64% of all adult Americans own a smartphone with the ability to take photos and videos; an estimated 159,670,545 adult Americans based on July 2016 Census Bureau data. Recent social media startup, Instagram, has a reported daily user base of 300 million global users as of November 2016. The social media app alone is responsible for an 4estimated 80 million photos shared per day. A large degree of the work posted to sites like Instagram are representational in nature; depicting everyday situations. A recent report estimates that 1.2 trillion photos will be taken worldwide in 2017; a number that will continue to grow by 9% annually. Charlotte Cotton describes in her essay, “Photography is Magic” how recent changes in photography have provided an opportunity for artists to make work that reference both photography’s analogue past as well as its current place in contemporary culture. My work responds to the engulfment of representational imagery by creating opportunities to immerse the viewer in repeated sensations of beauty and the sublime. In this document, I will cover the evolution of my work from abstract, camera-based photographs through analogue, camera-less photographic processes, to installation work that invites viewers to contemplate and experience the awesome beauty of light directly.