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Murky: into Print


Moving from a photo investigation of my ideas to a printed book was an exciting follow up after a narrative emerged while organizing the initial album. Incorporating text in this step of project development offered so many different avenues of approaching the layout. Throughout the semester, I’ve realized I struggle with prompted projects, as I’ve always been pretty strictly process based. The challenge of responding to the prompt, while not creating something inauthentic to fit the boundaries or making something that feels more representational than an artistic response, was an engaging way to begin to explore new approaches to my creation process. 




I knew I wanted to use text to reinforce the narrative of the photos themselves, but didn’t necessarily want to present a fully explained project. With my focus on encouraging viewers to consider themselves and the world around them, I don’t want them to just read a message and move on to the next part of their day. Studies on viewers interacting with art have shown that it is a perceived feeling of mastery over understanding that most heavily impacts their level of involvement in the work they’re viewing, and it’s remained a consideration in my work ever since. 




I settled on including the words of others, specifically in the sections of the book focusing on the interaction of public and private. I hope the inclusion of wider perspectives offers more for readers to add dimension and their own conclusions on the project’s ideas.



I feel like this project led me where it wanted to go, and I’m either satisfied with how it turned out, or intensely motivated to do it again but better. I liked segregating the different messages through the editing styles, and the general atmosphere and compositional choices. Moving forward, there’s definitely a lot to learn about over-utilizing editing to distort without entirely killing quality, on top of a million other skills that wouldn’t hurt to brush up on. 



“We approach the new with the psychological conditioning and sensory responses of the old. This class naturally occurs in transitional periods. […] a common failure: the attempt to do a job demanded by the new environment with the tools of the old.” (McLuhan, 94-95) 

Thank you for reading.
GCF 


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