In Crossing the Pages, I visually explore the experience of reading a book. It is driven by the thought that literature and the creative escape it provides are largely being neglected in our current technologically advanced culture. When you open a book, you are taken on a journey that you would have never experienced otherwise, whether it’s just around the corner or in another world.
In this fine art body of work, I have chosen 5 specific genres to illustrate the powerful imagery that books can give us. Each genre is a diptych (a set of 2 photos), one showing a wide shot of the setting in landscape form and the other a closer, more abstract photo of a genre-based detail. These photos represent the start of many possible stories just waiting in still time for someone to come and read them.
United by the diptych pattern, each pair is unique in its style to reflect the genre it represents. For example, in the mystery genre, I used high contrast and hard lighting to give energy and tension to the photos. For the dystopian genre, I used a Dutch tilt, unsaturated colors, and lyrical color to give the viewer an unsettled feeling.
I have included literary elements in each photograph to portray that when we read, books are experiencing our world just as we are experiencing theirs. Those experiences are ones that we can always carry with us along with the lessons they teach us. May we never forget the landscapes in which books give us to play.
Flickr Account: https://flic.kr/ps/3YM6Dh