Preview
Creation Date
2012
Description
Installation view of Stopped: Exhibition of Campus Fashion
Medium
Photography
Rights
Copyright for this work is held by the artist.
Keywords
Color Photography, Inkjet Print, Street Fashion, Students, Hybrid Photography
Artist Statement
Stopped
This isn’t Fifth Avenue in New York or Rue Saint-Honore in Paris. This is certainly not Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills or State Street in Chicago. I am not photographing the off duty model stepping out of the studio or the “silver fox” from the city. This is Lawrence University. I am photographing my peers.
I sit myself down in a well-trodden area and watch as people walk past. A few notice the bulky camera but just keep walking. I wait until someone catches my eye. The person I am waiting for does not necessarily have to be donning the most fashionable outfit or appear perfectly put together; this certain student should be someone who rocks what he or she chose to put on in the morning. There are some people that I notice walking around campus almost everyday that fascinate me with their wardrobe. Those are the people I lust after-photographically speaking-as additions to my growing series.
People consistently ask what to do when photographed. When they ask, I am looking through the lens at their inquiring faces. Usually they start to smile. If, and only if, there is a genuine smile that somehow completes the image and the outfit, I let that smile stick. Otherwise I challenge my subject to resist the grin. When I say no smiles, their whole demeanor changes. They are suddenly aware that they were chosen to display their fashion sense.
After documenting each outfit, I quickly jot down the student’s name and major. Street photographers tend to group their fashionable subjects according to where they were photographed. That seems illogical in a place where each person hails from a different hometown. Instead, I catalogue each student by his or her field of study. I photograph them not knowing their major so when they tell me what group they fall into, it’s either my internal eye roll, “of course you’re a Geology major”, or I am pleasantly surprised by the billowing cape on the East Asian Studies student.
This work is funded in part by a Mellon Senior Experience Grant.