What has interested me most in photography over the last year or so has been the human face, and the different characters derived from its distortion. To me, when faces are instantly recognizable, they lose meaning.
This act of defacement is an abstraction of features, and allows me to examine elements I would normally overlook.
The incomplete features, assembled within the wavering spherical confines are like embryos. They float in a black void, without setting or contextualization. Although they might seem like preserved specimens, the two subjects are very much alive. I didn’t mean to convey what has been described when I first started the project, but instead was looking for ‘meaning’ to grow out of the process.
The distortions make the faces difficult to recognize, the subjects then could represent anyone. A mouth gasps for air, the nostrils flare in anticipation of smell and eyelids strain to open. The watery microcosm inhibits perception: the senses have been crippled.
—Harrison Pickering ’16