Charleen or yeah, we made it
I didn’t expect to reach that level of inspiration and learning through my project for the Trinity Fellowship. I realized so many things and boiled so many ideas about photography.
I wasn’t sure if James and my colleagues would like my saturated style for the pictures, but in the end it worked well, they thought it was actually a matching choice for Charleen.
My methodology has always been exploring in-between places or at least erasing edges. For Charleen, I wanted to erase the boundaries between the observer and the observed — between the one who captures and the one who is captured. “Saturation” as a style that I also like to practice when writing ( and living!) when I am not someone who writes using a language, but someone who becomes language. With Charleen, I wanted her energy to spread all around so the viewer would be able to feel it.
Black and white or any sanitized minimalist picture could not do this work. Also, as James pointed out, there is something very psychedelic about the pictures, something related to the past life of brave Charleen (addiction and surviving). I was happy about his last comment when James noticed how Charleen and her dog seemed comfortable with me. I didn’t think about that, and I felt so much gratitude for being welcomed into her life, revealing both strength and vulnerability.
I got a little frustrated with the last project about the life of unhoused people, showing them in their worst moments. I understand there is a social and political mission that the photographer feels: a mission to reveal and change the world?! Based on this, I will try to create a series of unhoused pictures showing tiny moments of joy or happiness or pleasure or kindness (subverting for good!), because I believe this is the true resistance: giving power to them instead of portraying them as people without agency. I hope to find more diverse images when searching unhoused people on internet. I hope I am able to do it and I will do it quietly. My family can't really know I am doing this. (If it makes it through the museum, then they will tell me I had a great idea...)
Charleen at Trinity College
