Last year, in order to break my photography dry spell of about 3 years of barely shooting, I took some continuing ed classes at the International Center of Photography. The first class I took focused on the human condition through self portraiture, which is basically my art in a nutshell, so it was a match made in heaven.
During the 5 week course we had to work on a single project. My senior thesis had been my own personal Tarot cards comprised of self portraits and some still life, and I figured that class would be the perfect opportunity to continue. Little did I know that my new approach to Tarot's influence on my photos would take a different turn.
When I originally started my project I would just pick cards that spoke to me at the time and recreate them in my own interpretation. This time I would pull a card, and let Tarot dictate what card I should create. This new approach led me to thinking about the cards less literally, and grew into evaluating my life at the time more symbolically.
This all came together at an interesting time in my life, just months after my father had passed away. I was having some pretty disturbing dreams, one of which really stuck with me, and I was inspired to try to recreate the visual. In my dream my father was still alive and for some reason had his eyes burned out with a blowtorch. He proceeded to go on as though nothing had happened even though he was walking around with two smoking black holes for eye sockets.
This is what I created:
I created more images to go with this series that can be seen on my website here
I haven't touched the series since the fall, but definitely need to get back into it...
-Vanessa
