With these photographs, I pulled two characters from film I made in high school. In the film, these two girls develop a friendship-cum-love affair in their Mennonite village, as the village swiftly modernizes midst the Mennonite schism of the 1950s. I wanted to express the intimacy of the girls’ friendship midst the tension of the town's growth. Sorry I keep saying 'midst.' In my film, I attempt to parallel the tense expansion of the town with the coming of age of the girls. In one sense, it's about loss of innocence.
I intended to show the girls on a walk in the woods together (not as teen runaways, as I said in class - I think I said that because I had Justine on the brain and because I directed the girls that way - so that they would look a little more longing/desperate/supportive of each other in their gestures) Their relationship grows in these quiet moments together and in the context of the village's expansion. My original plan was to sketch the architecture of the city that sits just beyond their town and influences its growth into the skyline behind their woods. This might capture the context. I am still interested in going back and sketching this idea - maybe by layering negatives instead of drawing the architecture in myself.
I wished to reflect my puzzlement about staged narrative photography (or more specifically large e format color photography, like Justine Kurlan's work) with the hand-drawn architecture and the super-styled costumes of my characters-- that is, I am tempted by this artificiality and fascinated at why I am so pulled to it. It seems that created a super-straightforward, super-imaginative narrative in a big nature scene gets at a draw to superficial/natural tensions - and with artificial architecture I want to see how my reaction changes. I think I also need to heighten the superficiality and accessibility of my narrative.
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