The Identity Experiment

This was an idea that came to me extremely last minute—I saw a singular photo online, and I knew I wanted to try and recreate it. The original photo was shot in a studio, and the photographer had originally taken a model with a mask, and shot the images with a long exposure effect.

I, however, did not have access to a studio when attempting this shoot. I searched my school’s campus, asking around for any empty spaces that I may be able to borrow, and upon further examination, I was able to sneak into a vacant dance studio. However, it was only unoccupied for roughly half an hour—so I had a very limited amount of time to try and bring this concept together.

I initially attempted the long-exposure effect on Arnav, the model pictured above, but with only half an hour to spare, I could not get the images to look quite like how I had pictured, so I had him stand in front of the mirror instead, adjusting my settings to make the photos look as clear as possible. We alternated between shots with the mask, no mask, and him sitting down and facing his own reflection—and I was rather pleased at the results. For such a last minute shoot on our college campus, I could not have been more excited to look through, edit, and upload these photos.

My hopes for this shoot were to portray a picture of a man who is struggling with his identity—someone who doesn’t quite know who he is or what he wants, and by having Arnav face the mirror (pictured below) I was able to capture this idea somewhat. By concealing his real face with a mask and giving him a mirror, he would be confronting himself and his own identity, in a way—making for a strange and unsettling scene.

Limerence and Silence

16 November 2024

I had a million reasons for wanting to do this shoot—I’ve always wanted to somehow replicate a very specific scenario in my life that had bothered me quite a bit, and I had always come up short of ideas. I’ve written about it over the years, but it wasn’t until I spent many hours scrolling on Pinterest and walking around in art museums that I was able to think of this. These photos are inspired by René Magritte’s The Lovers, which I had the pleasure of seeing on all of my trips to New York City this year. Surrealism has always fascinated me, so I wanted to tie this in somehow with that heavy and disturbing feeling of limerence. The person that I instantly thought of when I shot this has not been in my life for a couple of years now, but this experience had impacted me in so many ways, both good and bad—this feeling that I experienced is one, however, that I’ll never forget. 

I originally wanted to shoot this in the grocery store, (as this is where it happened to me), but I thought that replicating it exactly would defeat the whole purpose of the shoot, taking away the entire idea of limerence that I had so hoped to portray. To know someone, and be aware that you will always have lots of love for them, despite their actions and behaviors, is arguably one of the worst feelings. Knowing that there is a person out there who is simply living every single day without a single thought regarding you and your well-being is something that I’ve had to sit with for quite some time now, and have finally come to terms with it. 

Limerence can be defined as almost an obsession of sorts—one that isn’t reciprocated even in the slightest. As someone who has always struggled with unhealthy attachments to people who only inflict harm upon me and my life, this shoot was extremely easy to enact. I simply wanted a shot where there were two people who were clearly connected to each other (hence the outfits inspired by the painting) who had both acknowledged each other, none of them acting or doing anything to fill the silence. 

Ignoring someone you know, especially someone who you think you really know, is quite difficult, really. The other shot that is shown above was simply another attempt at portraying a one-sided connection that will never end—these souls will still, always, be tied to each other, somehow. I was hoping that the large gap between the two would sort of demonstrate the silence, in a way, and not the distance—the fact that neither chooses to act speaks volumes, and I’m fairly satisfied with these results. I wanted to make this a series, because I have a lot of ideas regarding scenes with these two characters (that I have experienced myself), but who knows! I was finally able to create a visual for the feeling that I’m sure many others also experience, but I wish that it was talked about more. 

A Defiance of Conformity

04 November 2024

When I was doing this shoot, I had a multitude of ideas and themes that I wanted to incorporate throughout these images—and was quite satisfied with the results. Shot inside of the James Turrell Skyspace in Austin, Texas, I figured that this would be a location where I could practice capturing images that break various boundaries, as well as deviate from what is viewed as “the norm” whilst posing for a photograph. The space features a circular room lit purely by the elements, and can be quite the contemplative and peaceful spot. When I first encountered this space, I knew that this would be a great opportunity to try something new, although I was quite unsure of what I was doing—I only had an idea. Pictured above is Nikita, who also came to me with an idea similar to mine—he expressed similar feelings of attempting to adopt a rebellious nature, and was originally inspired by Willem Dafoe’s shoot for Interview Magazine in Russia. We did initially recreate the iconic image that everyone has most likely seen, but spent lots of time also experimenting with other rather unconventional poses that I hoped would be memorable. The photo above was most likely my favorite from the shoot—not only does it initially have the ability to capture the attention of an onlooker, but upon showing this image to several friends and family members, I noticed that they continued to glance back at the image more than once. This was my goal, ideally, to have an audience question what they were looking at—and not to feel strange about the photo, but rather in a “what am I looking at?” or a “what is he doing?” way. Although my goal was reached, as it was a very simple one, I want to thank Nikita for helping me channel this newfound sense of creativity and boldness within my photography, as it definitely strayed from any sort of normality. I think what really contributed to the boldness of this photo was the awkward and unconventional posing, the intensity of his upward gaze, and the lack of vibrancy—all things which helped me get my point across: that in which beauty and comfort can also be found through disturbance and unease in visual art.