When I clean my room I find small treasures. It's wonderful: I find things that I forgot even existed. Take for example, this photography project from my freshman year at Biola! It speaks so soundly to the beginning of a process that I am currently captured by-- learning how to fail. Embracing mistakes instead of pretending like I'm perfect. What I wanted was this: three chairs in a row, aligned, an inch apart and nicely exposed. I printed them in the darkroom with all three exposures on one piece of paper. It was hard because in between each exposure all I saw was white- since the paper hadn't been developed yet.
I might not be making sense-- but basically, it was hard to make it work because I couldn't see what I was doing. I ended up with about 25 of these little strips of chairs, never reaching my goal of 3 perfectly straight chairs one inch apart. So, I remember leaving the darkroom at 5am-- utterly discouraged after having worked all night with zero results.
The irony here is that my project revolved around the idea of imperfection. It was difficult for me to be accepting of things and people when they didn't meet my high standards, so I decided to take photos of less than perfect things (the chair is a bit warped if you look at it closely) to show that "imperfection is okay!"
Is it?
Does life have to be straight across and one inch apart?
1 comment:
I remember this project so vividly! And, in fact, I always tell people about the sweet project my roommate did our freshman year. Maybe its because I relate to it... I think it may be one of the most honest and profound projects ever. I love it! And I love you!
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