Artist's Statement

I’m like many artists out there: I don’t want to be labeled as such. 

What’s with my combative attitude?  I more or less woke up one day and decided to tack on the Art Theory and Practice major my freshmen year of college. I had no formal training besides weekly ceramic classes at the Ridley Tree at the tender age of seven. So how did I get from there to here? Why am I coming to terms with my newfound title today?

I guess this begs to ask, “Who am I?” Though the question is existential and definitely cannot be answered concisely and definitively, I can say what I know so far. Right now I’m Rosalie. Right now I’m a filmmaker interested in aesthetic technique. I’m passionate about production design/art direction because I like telling the story that the actors and the camera can’t tell, and I especially like how space can subtly change the tone.

And then there is a part of me that doesn’t necessarily fit that mold: I also love to take portrait photography. The only criteria I have set for me in the past is that I am unfamiliar with my subjects. I find strangers more universally relatable than my best friends. I can look at them with a fresh perspective and the viewer, also a stranger to my subject, can do so as well. I recently stepped outside US borders to take portraits of strangers when I went to India and explored a whole new type of foreignness in my subjects. I see my critical eye in all of my pictures. It may be through the editing in Photoshop or in the focus, angle, and depth of field. It’s almost impossible to not be critical of those I don’t know, and how does my photography express that? My biggest want with portrait photography is to figure out how we as people become biased towards people we don’t even know. Also, how does that differ when considering our opinions of people we think we know (celebrities)? Considering that, what makes a portrait of a celebrity important? Can an image using the same techniques but with an unknown subject have the same value?

These are the questions that I’ve explored and continue to explore with my art. I’ve asked myself a lot of questions, as is evident here, but I want my images to call attention to the questions I ask myself. I’ve shown viewers the people that I’ve shared brief, awkward three-minute encounters with, but now I want to show them how the unknown can be so familiar.

That’s my mumbo jumbo. When I know how to make sense of it all, this, assumingly, will become a bit more clear.