Author Archives: fdzorens

Final Project- Frances

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These cards were all made from photographs taken by each individual. The choice of action/pose for the card was not dictated by me, but by each person on their own, sometimes with some assistance from me. The “facts” on the back are also the unadulterated answers from each individual. This project is meant to play with and question how we present ourselves in the world, how we distill a person’s identity, how so often it seems that friendships are presented as collector’s items, and finally for the sake of tending my nostalgia and how much I wish I could be with these people.

These cards will be printed, the project fulfilled will be one that is tactile, and I will sending sets of these “trading cards” to each individual who assisted me in the project.

trading cards in the works

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I don’t have any images to share yet. Given the nature of my project I am somewhat reliant on others, but I am going to share the outline of some of the images that are in the works right now.

Person 1: She is sitting on the floor surrounded by records

Person 2: Working at a table with a dutch oven, paints, and a sewing machine. She has given herself the title of “The Scrappy Sentimentalist”

Person 3: She holds a bowl of cookie dough that she is making, but her face is also completely covered in cookie dough.

Person 4: He is standing in front his fridge, apron on, spatula and tongs wielded with his arms crossed.

Person 5: She is doing a classic track and field pose.

I am still brainstorming and working with 7 other people on what they would like to do or whether they would like to be a part of the project. I have reached out to a fairly large group because I know some people may not be able to take the photos in time.

I also have been doing quite a lot of research on possible printing services for these cards:

-Nations Photo Lab has a pretty simple “trader card” option with a lot of customizability.

-Topps (the maker of most sold Baseball cards) also has a custom option, that I think could be really interesting to look into. It would be so wild to have actual Topps branded cards for a project like this.

-http://www.custom-tradingcards.com/ is another option

I look forward to hearing what people think or any suggestions!

 

Frances Final Project

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Before all of this happened the idea that I was beginning to formulate for my final project was to create what would essentially be portraits in the form trading cards of friends from Bowdoin, specifically seniors. It was built on nostalgia and wanting to hold onto these people, to create some sort or relic or embodiment of who they are. I wanted it to be tactile, to pull the images out of a box in our exhibition, as if they were baseball cards (or maybe Pokémon cards if that’s more relevant for our age group), or to just have them feel like a box of photos. I wanted them to be almost like carte-de -visite of these people that had come to impact my time at Bowdoin so much.

With everything that is going on, I figured that I would have to give up this idea, but I just couldn’t. In many ways it felt more relevant than ever, especially given that we are no longer able to make physical photographs in the photo lab and instead are stuck working through the screen. So, I have chosen to continue with this idea with some edits and elaboration on what I was thinking before.

From the start, my goal with this project was not to try and somehow distill or capture the character of one of these people in a single photograph. I am not trying to manufacture a “Winter Garden Photograph.” Instead, I am hoping to critique this idea with some sarcasm.

So far I have reached out to 12 of my friends, fellow seniors who are all over the country and have asked for them to think of skill, trait, hobby, characteristic of themselves that they want to represent in a portrait. I have left the choice up to them. The goal of this is to play with and challenge  the practice of how we distill people down to a certain trait or skill and how that really fails to capture who they truly are. In addition, I have left the choice up to them as an experiment and challenge for people to choose how they want to represent themselves. I have told them to somehow represent this characteristic with a prop or props (or an outfit) and then to stage a portrait of themselves taken by someone around them. I am hoping these will look like the very staged trading card photos that are made for kids playing T-ball or rec soccer. I will also be making one of myself.

Another idea that I want to address in this project in relation to the initial idea of nostalgia, and perhaps more so corrupted nostalgia, is how we so often now “need” evidence of connection and friendship with people and how this manifests in social media (i.e. photos of friends, tagging people, etc.). Friendships begin to shift more so into collector’s items for some in this practice. On the flip side of this, during this pandemic, our ability to connect with the people we care about is strained and made far more difficult. So many of us just trying to hold onto and maintain these connections that we have made and “collected” in our lives.

These portraits that I collect I will edit and then format to be made into actual trading cards. This will include the person’s name, and likely some arbitrary facts about them on the back. I also have opened up the opportunity for some people to come up with a title or nickname for themselves. It certainly is odd to not be the person that is actually taking the photos for this project. I am relying almost entirely on others ( of course with lots of my direction). But, I kind of think that this approach to my project really captures the experience of this pandemic. I am trying to forge this connection, to in some ways acknowledge and ignore the distance. I am dependent on others as all of us are, as the whole world is right now. I know that doing this project would be so much easier and in many so much better if I was able to standardize and be the photographer. However, that is not possible right now. This project will go on though, just as life will.

 

Details:

Digital images that will be formatted into “trading cards”

 

Timeline:

 

By 4/28: Reach out to portrait subjects to be a part of the project, research possible printing locations for the trading cards (Nations Photo Lab, Topps, etc.)

 

5/3: Receive photos from portrait subjects

 

5/6: Format and send trading cards for printing

Photos of My Mother-Frances

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These are all photos of my mother. Oddly, I felt somewhat uncomfortable taking photos of her with a goal. So much more often when I take photos of her they are spontaneous and don’t feel as forced in a way. That is why so many of the photos are of objects, because for me, it felt more natural to see and feel my mother in them, then to try to force a photo of her that did the same.

 

The “New Hope, PA Photograph”

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I cannot remember a time when there were not stacks of photos, albums, bins, and scrapbooks out in the house somewhere that my mother was in the process of going through. For many years there was a goal of “finishing the scrapbooks,” an unachievable target, which my sister and I, in our youth, worked toward as we filled the pages with brightly colored paper that garishly and over-decorated with stickers and cut-outs. The photographs were not our focus at the time. Today, my mother sits on the couch with me and shows me photos that she is sorting through, picking the ones to keep, the ones to send, and the ones to shred (my mother once told me to shred any photos I was throwing out  in order to avoid becoming an art students project á la found art). I like looking through these family photos with my family. There is something that makes me feel connected when I learn the names and faces of my lineage, when I see photos of my parents before they were married, and when the power of genetics becomes so apparent as I see the baby photos of aunts and see the same face in children’s baby photos. But it has always been a collective activity.

Very rarely in my life have I sat down alone and looked through family photos. My mother or parents has always been my side, or sometimes even a slew of cousins, aunts, and uncles as we crowd on my grandparent’s couch to flip through scrapbooks. So, as I sat on my bed tonight, with a scrapbook and four boxes of photos to look through, I didn’t think I would it would feel different to look at them alone. I was wrong. Of course, I sat down with an objective, to find my own “Winter Garden Photograph,” which shifted my experience, but even with this searching mentality, I think that being alone while I looked was the most essential aspect of finding the photo. Instead of pointing out in features, deciphering the location or time, exclaiming at outfits and hairstyles aloud with others, as I looked at the photos I perceived and processed them internally. I held them only in my hands to see, not with arm extended or shifted away, to share with others. It was an intimate experience in which what I looked for in the photo was the essence that I understood of that person.

I didn’t come into the process knowing that I was going to look for a photo of my father. But as I continued to look at photos, I kept feeling myself looking at or for him in the image. Perhaps this is the result of stumbling across a truly iconic photo of my father, and from then wanting to just look for more, but I don’t think that is the only reason. There is something about my father that makes his true essence hard to capture. I have seen pieces here and there in other photos, but it’s hard to photo that I think really allows for me to feel the essence of his being. My “Winter Garden Photograph” did not immediately stand out to me. It is a photo of my father, standing in a place that I do not exactly know. I looked at it for a while, noticing my father’s posture, his clothing, his body language, but I kept moving. I realized as I had moved onto another box, that I was still thinking about that photo, one that was far less iconic from other photos, including one of my father standing in front of Half-Dome with his acid wash jeans and 80s ‘stache. And that didn’t exactly make sense to me, but thinking of Barthes, and what he writes about the photos that we still see or think about when our eyes are closed, made me realize that there was something in that photo, something that was drawing me in. What was pulling me back to the photo, I realized as I looked at it again, was that it contained in it an image of my father that embodied who he is. He is still, pensive, patient, serious, but playful. He is curious, intelligent, stubborn. He is himself, my father, but also not. He is the essence of himself in this photo.

Face to Face Portraits-Making It Real: Frances Zorensky

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For this project, I took, what I am calling, face to face portraits of my friends. All of these portraits were taken during a FaceTime call, a liminal space between closeness and distance, that to a certain extent, is able to bend reality.

These connections, these portraits are real, but they are also imaginary. They are virtual portraits, not just digitals ones, in which the distance between the camera and the subject is not just a few feet, but thousands of miles. However, at the same time, the image lies in the palm of my hand and is captured in that same palm with a screenshot. How can an image be so close, but also so far away? How can I make a portrait of a friend when I cannot be physically with them? How do I maintain a friendship and a connection?

This human connection via portraiture is what I wanted to make real.

 

 

Yesterday marked the beginning of week three of shelter-in-place here in San Francisco. I am living with my parents in their new-is apartment, having moved out of the suburbs into the city this past summer. My sister and her boyfriend live a few blocks so they are also a part of our quarantine pod. These photos come from many walks throughout the neighborhood with my family, trips to the grocery store, as well as lots of time within the apartment.

The transition has been challenging, as it has been for all of us in different ways. The balance of feelings of normalcy and absurdity tip back in forth for me in the day, in subtle and sometimes not so subtle ways. These photos embody moments of my life right now. Upon first glance they do not seem all that absurd; they are not photos that scream “there is a global pandemic going on!” However, the context with which they were taken, whether it is the actual setting (waiting in line to enter the grocery store at 6 foot markers) or simply just the fact that we are living in shelter-in-place, I believe shades these images with a range of different emotions for me.