project 24 is a year long study of my life. i spent the last year from my 24th birthday (february 11) to my 25th birthday (february 11). at 8 o’clock every night i took a photo of myself and what i was looking at. i took a typical portrait and typical landscape shot, and even kept the constraints the same for each type of image.
the main focus of all of my work has been honesty- and have made a conscious decision to leave behind the air brushed glamour and fantasy i used to strive for- which i still respect and love- in favor of the raw, honest truth. you get to see me ‘cleaned up’, but more often than not, you see a hot mess. this is the truth. and that is why i want to share it.
why do this? or the most common question i receive: why should you care about me? i believe art about people should be an accurate and detailed story. the deeper and more honest you get, the more personal the work becomes. the more personal the work becomes, the closer you are to the subject. the closer you are to the subject, the more you can relate. the more you can relate, the more you can understand and appreciate. the art becomes as much of a mirror as it does a portrait.
i tried to answer the following question: can a thin slice of everyday life accurately present who you are? how much information is needed to tell your story, to let people see you for who you are? why this is important to me is a question i don’t bother answering, all i know is the need in my heart to answer it.
8 comments:
The images are amazing, especially the wide variety of the ten in a block. The range of your expression is very wide. It looks like a lot of fun and a lot of hard work at the same time. I think the writing statement you made is very concise and understandable. It's like you're giving a gift to other people.
When I look at your work here, I feel as though I know it from the inside and the outside because your honesty has made them one and the same.
Have you heard of the 7 UP! documentary series by Michael Apted on British television? It's available on DVD, and it follows the lives of a group of people from birth to now, checking in every seven years with interviews and profiles. As a documentary, it asks the kind of questions you are interested in, which makes me wonder: is your work a documentary? Are you performing the role of yourself?
Brilliant!
Your ability to project in a series of photos your inner feelings is simply incredible. You seem to offer the spectator a key to unlock the door to your most private emotions. Your foresight in planning & executing this year-long project shows the remarkable tenacity you have for your artwork.
The text draws the attention of the reader. I felt that your intended lack of capitalization compelled me to focus even more closely on the actual text, resulting in my getting more meaning out of the words.
Your images are beautifully composed and I am very interested in the questions you are asking. I look forward to seeing more of this project!
thank you so much for the comments...
i'd like to add that what mike was alluding to i have thought a great deal about, but haven't made 'work' or statements on yet, but i truly believe that life itself is a performance and we are all performance artists. just in being 'ourselves'. sometimes, even when we are alone. in fact the only time we are not performing is when we are sleeping.
It's interesting to think about the level of mediation within a performance such as this. It is a documentation of a time-based performance that revolves around issues of identity. How different would it be if you weren't the one doing the documentation? I agree with your sentiments about life being a performance, but have to disagree when you say it stops at sleeping. I feel like my dreams are my greatest performances.
I always enjoy introspective Art. What this project leaves me with is not only a perspective into the Artist's life but also a placement in the context of art and history.
I don't think any one of us can think of the world as being anything other than "a stage" as new as Andy Warhol's conceptualism. We're all actors with a mask, etc. as also elicited by much political punk rock and hip-hop music. Cindy Sherman, Barbara Kruger, Nikki S. Lee and others have shed light on the subject of self in the world as well delving into identity issues that become culturally allusive. Maybe the greatest intrigue in Lara's body of work for me is not only a certain stylist that falls in line with a genre of similar-working artists, but it's minimalistic stance based on uber-repetitious behavior.
As with traditional Americana blue grass, blues, and folk music, an emphasis on simple chord modulation with extremely repetitious action simulates lamentation over the song being played. It becomes internalized as the notes of familiarity burn into the psyche from a simple, repeating phrase.
Lara's project brings this full circle where lamentation welcomes introspection for the Artist as well as the "listener." The project is a visual diary- a story.
Is it minimalism performed, or exhibiting how any repeating act brings rhythm, movement and a pattern that unveils a greater part of a whole? The gestalt is the answer; in it's pieces, a continuous vein.
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