What are you Grateful for?
Artist Statement:
For my photography midterm, I decided to create a photo series of black and white portraiture. I have always loved black and white photography and portraits, so I thought what better way to create a project I was passionate about, than to combine the two mediums. I created a photo series with people who I have gotten to know and people who I am grateful for, and after taking each photograph; I asked the subject what they are grateful for. I decided to create black and white portraits because I think black and white coloring gives the photograph a sense of intimacy and intensity, a theme that goes along well with asking someone what they are truly grateful for. To be grateful is to be appreciative, to express gratitude, and I believe black and white photography captures that definition. The idea I had for this project was at first to go along with the theme of “Humans of New York,” since I am from New York and I have always followed the photographer’s work on Facebook. He takes photographs of people, not necessarily their faces, but either some body part or something that has meaning to them and asks each subject to tell a story or sentence about themselves. I wanted to create a photo series that I thought would resonate with the audience. I wanted to create a photo series that had meaning and so I came up with this series on close friends and gratefulness. I also decided to challenge myself and added in an additional theme by using the alphabet to choose my subjects. I went through the alphabet and chose a person close to me according to their name such as A for my friend Alicia or K for my friend Katie. This challenged me greatly because I had to find people who were close to me whom I could photograph but could not repeat names that started with the same letter. This part of the project made it difficult to find people who are close to me with names that start with certain letters such as X or Y.
- Nikki Wellner
For my photography midterm, I decided to create a photo series of black and white portraiture. I have always loved black and white photography and portraits, so I thought what better way to create a project I was passionate about, than to combine the two mediums. I created a photo series with people who I have gotten to know and people who I am grateful for, and after taking each photograph; I asked the subject what they are grateful for. I decided to create black and white portraits because I think black and white coloring gives the photograph a sense of intimacy and intensity, a theme that goes along well with asking someone what they are truly grateful for. To be grateful is to be appreciative, to express gratitude, and I believe black and white photography captures that definition. The idea I had for this project was at first to go along with the theme of “Humans of New York,” since I am from New York and I have always followed the photographer’s work on Facebook. He takes photographs of people, not necessarily their faces, but either some body part or something that has meaning to them and asks each subject to tell a story or sentence about themselves. I wanted to create a photo series that I thought would resonate with the audience. I wanted to create a photo series that had meaning and so I came up with this series on close friends and gratefulness. I also decided to challenge myself and added in an additional theme by using the alphabet to choose my subjects. I went through the alphabet and chose a person close to me according to their name such as A for my friend Alicia or K for my friend Katie. This challenged me greatly because I had to find people who were close to me whom I could photograph but could not repeat names that started with the same letter. This part of the project made it difficult to find people who are close to me with names that start with certain letters such as X or Y.
- Nikki Wellner