Art 342 Project

The core meaning behind these photographs is all about trying to visually express my mother, Gina. Aesthetically, I wanted a little bit more of deeper and darker shadows because that is her work environment at home. She works in complete darkness, she wears all black, she always looks angry or mad, and she is the nicest person you will ever meet. She will go out of her way to make sure everyone in the family is happy and she is a beacon of kindness.

The portrait photo is of my mom sitting in her dark room with a light on her face reflecting off her glasses and one of the family's dogs, Bandit sitting on the left arm of the chair. There are some windows in the background that are blocked out by some particle board and on the right side there are big almost floor to ceiling windows that are covered by black out curtains. The object photo is somewhat similar in which my mom’s teddy bear is filling in for her sitting in the same armchair working on her laptop with the only illumination being on the teddy bear's face and body from the laptop while the background fades out into the shadows and darkness of the room.

The portrait photo I wanted to be very dark and have deep shadows in order to draw attention to my mom’s face both because it needed to be the focus of the photo but then also because if anyone were to walk into her office at any given moment that is all they will see is her face lit up by her work laptop screen. I wanted her to appear as a beacon of kindness, her smiling face almost completely enveloped in darkness. She keeps her office in complete darkness which I also carried over into the object photograph. The object is my mother’s childhood teddy bear. She has had him since she was a young child. The teddy bear is falling apart, it is missing its nose and the painted lips are fading but it just shows how much it was loved and used for its purpose. I wanted the teddy bear to fill in for her to both inject a little bit of humor but also because anyone that knows my mom knows she doesn’t really leave her chair, it is her comfort spot where she spends most of her day working and relaxing. The final photograph is my mother’s second favorite location; her garden. I wasn’t able to photograph her favorite location because that is Disneyland which is just a little out of reach but she loves her garden almost as much. Recently she hasn’t been able to take care of it since she found a new job and has been putting all of her effort into her work which she usually does but she seems to be putting even more effort into it since it is a new job with new faces and a new boss. The garden is starting to become overgrown and hasn’t been maintained quite as much as it usually is but it still remains my mother’s favorite part of the house. She grew up in Chicago, Illinois and lived there for most of her life so she wasn’t able to keep a garden in the city, ever since she moved to Idaho she has kept a garden.

Maximus Skeen