Sunday, October 10, 2010

Educational Confinement: Artist Statement

This photo is titled "Educational Confinement", because its purpose is to explore the idea of agitation, and one way of exploring agitation was the idea of being torn between academic responsibilities and our desire to be free of responsibility.

We decided to contrast the brightness of the outside with the darkness of the library, and this is symbolic of the broader meaning of the photo, because it is about juxtaposing our free time with time spent outside of school. The darkness of the photo reflects the level of happiness the student gets from studying and the brightness reflects his desire for freedom and therefore happiness.

The props used for the photo were books and we choose these books because of their size and seemingly esoteric content.The choice of props again shows how frustrating, and inapplicable to daily life school can sometimes be. The use of Billy in the photo was to capture a student who was distracted from his educational pursuits with the possibilities the outside world holds.

Billy is clearly contemplating something beyond what school offers and the photo leaves the viewer to speculate what that may be. However, considering the context in which this photo was taken, which is at a university with a college student, some may interpret the student to be thinking of normal things college students think about. That could mean anything from parties, to grades, to typical outside activities like hiking or playing sports.

All of these considerations lead to the overarching theme, which is the disconnect between education from library books and freedom from being outside. This is the source of the students agitation, with his current obligation.

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