Lucy Baird ‘16 MFA
Photography straddles its role as both medium and mode, existing between representation and object, between showing a thing and being a thing. Sometimes existing as both.
The works in the series “2-3” are rooted in the misunderstanding of photography as a reductionist process. The idea that by taking an image of an object, it is somehow reduced to less than its physical self through the eye of the camera. Yet sculpture and photography are inextricably linked. Thus my practice asks the question of what is the “real” work, the physical or photographic version, or something between the two.
My process turns the raw materials of image making – light, space, shadow, flatness and optics – into the raw materials of sculpture. Each work initiates a feedback loop, where images become dimensional and dimensional work becomes images, the result is documented again and re-used as the raw materials for making.
Each piece is made not only of the space in which it exists, but also relies on the way our minds and eyes see and understand the combination of image and object in space. Emphasizing the inherent truth that the camera sees differently than the human eye, and thus camera and human vision challenge each other when both are present.
The pieces are composite realities constructed to play with what we understand to be factual. Each work in the series is an elaborate visual puzzle, comprised of image and object, or image and site. Creating hybrid works that are materially ambivalent.