“Intoxicated Distortion” is about the personal response to the experience of partying as an undergraduate student at Alfred University and studying abroad in Florence, Italy. Photographs were taken as documentation representing my perception of partaking and witnessing party environments. When partaking, my iPhone is used to photograph and video immediate moments. When witnessing, a DSLR camera is brought to replicate what I perceive when I partake in partying. The digital photographs used towards the imagery of my work are long exposures captured with the camera’s flash. These photographs are primarily portraits of people on a dance floor either submersed in their surroundings or responding to the camera. Which end up representing a moment in time rather than the direct characteristics of the person(s) in the composition. Besides the events on the dance floor, since the night itself also occurs outside of a bar or club, I also have photographs documenting the experience of being lost and finding where home is or where the night ends. 

After collecting photographs over the past two years, I created digital collages that distort the perspective of my experience and emulate a different image. These distortions show how I question my memory of what occurs during the events of partying. These collages are then used towards numerous printmaking methods that involve either drawing or physical mark making or finding a way to digitally print the photo onto a matrix and create a physical print. Besides the prints, I had my partner photograph self-portraits on a polaroid camera to show what I look like in an intimate setting. These polaroids were then manipulated to destroy and distort myself to visualize the feeling of the end of the night after partying. Then these polaroids were used towards image transfers onto hand-made paper to emulate and abstract another image of myself. Besides questioning and distorting my memory of what I saw throughout the night, I am also destroying and distorting myself.  

(images are posters from the exhibition)

Full BFA Thesis: