Perfection-ality
by Samantha Vander Hyden
Perfection – ality is series of five photographic portraits, presented in sets of two and mounted in specially designed frames.
This series explores the difference between reality and perfection by illustrating five people, each in two staged scenarios. One image is an ordinary, realistic situation,showing the kind of struggle that comes from trying to achieve perfection. The other is an image portraying how we may see this perfection in our mind.
In each pair of images, I mean to set up tension between the real and imagined to reveal the struggle we face in trying to achieve unattainable goals. In addition, I hope to explore the way our goals skew our own view of reality and make us guilty of pursuing that which we clearly cannot have.
The frames play an important part in differentiating perfection and reality. I wanted to add distance between the photograph of perfection and the viewer to make this tension part of the viewing experience. The viewer must move around the image and adjust their body in order to get a good look. When trying to achieve perfection, no matter what we do, we never seem to achieve our goal or get close to it. Reality, on the other hand, is always in our face, much like the truth.
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