“amity” - Emerson Young Artists’ Showcase (2021), Jim Firestone award winner

DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY; 09/2020

THIS PIECE WAS A PART OF MY semester PROJECT, FOR MY high school PHOTOGRAPHY CLASS (ap 2d art and design, 2020 junior year, INSTRUCTED BY brian guilfoyle).

For this project, we were assigned to choose and develop an overall concept and create 15 concentrations. My concept was “Youth”

Artist statement:

these photos represent the beauty in diversity. Living in America as a daughter to immigrant parents was never easy. The constant battle to fit in within society often made me self conscious and upset that I couldn’t BE like the “ STANDARD”. Through this piece, I wanted to show the differences in each CULTURE and the UNITY BEYOND RACE. In every picture there is a lot of intimate contact with not just touch, but with expression as well. I wanted to emphasize the importance of unity despite the diverse differences. I also had my models shoot in their own cultures’ traditional clothing. the models represent Korean culture, Indian culture, Bolivian culture, and Chinese culture. When planning out this shoot, I felt the need for my models to dress in tRADITIONAL CLOTHING to EMPHASIZE the BEAUTY of culture. This signifies HOW PEOPLE CAN COME from somewhere completely different, but still CAN COME together as one in America. When adding the photos into the project, I increased the saturation OF the already colorful pictures to ALLOW the COLORS TO pop. Overall, this piece is very MEANINGFUL to me as it celebrates DIVERSITY.