(Un)Familiar Territories
Type: Academic
School: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Professor: T.F. Tierney
Seminar: SMLXL
Year: Fall 2018
The space we inhabit, whether it is communal or private, urban or rural, has a massive impact on how we see ourselves and our place in society.
Photography is an effective way of documenting such conditions and as a way to really understand context. This book features snapshots from my life as a student in the United States, with moments captured on campus and some images from my travels.
The camera helps you look at things differently. When you walk out with the intention of photographing experiences you observe and notice
more. Even ordinary, familiar places look different. I tried to capture the feeling of a place or the energy that was tangible in it. The atmosphere in a photograph is symbolic of a specific mental space. It is not about what you see, but how you see it.
The book is categorized into five parts based on the scale of the spaces. Using scales was a useful way to curate and reveal new meanings in my photography. This is the first iteration of what I hope will be a series of personal photo books.