Three Images
Pipeline
This is an image of a jail near my apartment. I went here hoping to capture the jail and it’s immediate neighbor, an elementary school, in the same frame. I ended up taking lots of photos of the jail from the sidewalk before a security guard came out. He asked me to stop taking photos and said he had me on tape. Initially, I wanted to create an image that captured that process for me, but I decided to aim for something a little more universal to connect to truth/audience/etc. I layered in banners from the neighboring elementary school, both to acknowledge their physical closeness and nod to their systemic closeness (school-to-prison pipeline). I created the layering effect with a mask and the eraser tool (for some reason the brush was giving me problems this day).
REBNY
This is a collage I created of neighborhood art and informational fliers, many of which tie into re-zoning and gentrification, scribbled atop an in-construction residential complex. I used the same technique as above.
Surveillance
The Links are visually striking to me and a confusing icon. They seem to represent a democratization of electricity/smart technology, while also a method for commercial advertising, and, also, art appreciation. I figured there must be something more to them than what they claim to be. Some investigation led me to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (a self-proclaimed leading nonprofit defending digital privacy, free speech, and innovation) online magazine, which ran an article last fall revealing that the security cameras on Link actually run constantly (though they delete information after 7 days). EFF warns that Link, if left unchecked/unquestioned, could be a tool for mainstreaming constant surveillance and potentially impede upon our privacy rights. So, I layered in an image from the security camera at the aforementioned jail.
Practice with mask-making and layers:
Emerging Media 1 