PROJECTS: Fairy Tales & other Stories
The Princess and the Pea, 2008
Series: Fairy Tales & other Stories
Locality: Montclair, NJ
Photography by Claire Rosen
Self Portrait
Artist Statement
Through self-portraiture, this series invites the viewer into a world of imagination and fairytales. The images depict a fantasy land in which the figure is caught in a moment of isolated contemplation. It is a mirror to personal inner experience, a visual recreation of my unconscious, like a half forgotten dream that articulates emotion rather than action.
Inside my dreams, I am someone else. I create characters, like alter egos, presented as recognizable archetypes. The figure inside the image often looks away from the viewer, the face hidden by the turn of the body or by a mask. I hope that the viewer will imagine themselves inside fairytale, and interpret the narrative of the image as one might interpret a fairytale, searching for hidden meeting inside the story.
This series speaks to living in the 21st Century, a time when we are constantly bombarded with noise, information and moving images. Still imagery, by contrast, allows us to shut out the noise and hear ourselves. I use photography to both escape and convey the overwhelming nature of our modern reality.
The pastoral setting of this work recalls a simpler time, while reminding us of humanity's attempt to conquer the enormity of nature. I draw on themes in classic fairytales - beauty, chastity, and passivity - not as a comment on post-feminism, but as an expression of a more universal experience. My aim with the use of folklore is to suggest the continuity of the human condition: outside, the physical world changes with dizzying speed; inside, our cerebral world remains timeless.
These are images from the world of my imagination and dreams. I hope the viewer will spend time with each photograph to experience how their reaction changes and deepens, morphing from my imagination to theirs.
