Fabricated Fiction

Photographed on 9/26/2022-10/3/2022

Published on 3/19/2023

This set of photos was taken for a conceptual photography assignment around creating a fictional storyline. After going through the major technical attributes of photography in previous assignments, our professor decided it was time to get more into the concepts of what makes a photo interesting, in this case crafting fiction for the camera. We discussed the differences between taking "real" and "fake" photos and how they can be interpreted.

A "real" photo is grounded in reality and people will draw conclusions about it based off how they perceive the reality presented. People still perceive "fake" photos based on what is presented, but there is a layer of fiction and play present that perhaps isn't in photos of reality. Every photographer has their own preferences for how they construct their images and where they land on the axis of "real" or "fake" will vary and look different for each. For me personally, I enjoy constructing images that ask the audience to suspend reality for a moment and to have fun with the falsehoods being shown.

I believe that a certain level of smoke and mirrors is necessary in most forms of art in order to obscure reality for a moment. Photography is an interesting medium because it can document slices of reality so well, but like any art form if you want to present something other than reality then some amount of editing and concealment is necessary. This isn't a bad thing, more so just a truth of media which asks us to suspend our disbelief. A lot of work goes into "movie magic" compared to the more direct work of editing documentaries for example, though there is a high level of craft from both.

This is a series I worked on with my girlfriend and my friends to make. We went out on the parkway to see Jupiter when it was closest to Earth in the night sky. While taking photos of the sky we also took some pictures of us playing around and smoking. I wanted to show a series of pictures of michevious teens rebeling after dark. I feel we accomplished this. As usual however, I was not satisfied with just this set of photos and my girlfriend and I took some more on a night after our classes.

This second set of photos focused on us, but as strangers rather than close lovers. We wanted to capture a multitude of chance meetings which the viewer could draw their own conclusions about if they had happy endings or not. These photos were taken at my girlfriend's very nice apartment in the modern lobby area. The spaces felt clean but empty and give the images a hollow feel. After these we took a couple of photos draped in a sheet for the classic "ghost" photoshoot which had some good results as well. I quite enjoyed working on a series that asked me to consider what was being shown rather than just how the image was being made.

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