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© Cynthia Henebry, Untitled (Lizzey in the classroom), 2013 |
While I am using the construct of photographing in and around divorced homes, I am aware that the framework of this project is just that: a method of accessing what I am really interested in, which is the internal process of self reflection and reverie. I want to understand how an external fracture like divorce affects the very internal process of identity formation and an even deeper sense of self knowledge. In The Poetics of Reverie, Gaston Bachelard writes, "Those original solitudes, the childhood solitudes, leave indelible marks on certain souls. Their entire life is sensitized for poetic reverie, for a reverie which knows the price of solitude. Childhood knows unhappiness through man. In solitude, it can relax its aches. When the human world leaves him in peace, he feels like the son of the cosmos. And thus, in his solitudes, from the moment he is master of his reveries, the child knows the happiness of dreaming which will later be the happiness of the poets." The photographs in this series express the tension and necessary relationship between inner turmoil and inner peace that Bachelard speaks of, and in portraits, landscapes, and still lifes, seek to explore the internal cosmos of the child.
Like all of the portraits, Untitled (Lizzey in the classroom) is a combined effort between the subject and myself. I decided where she would sit, moved the furniture, and cracked open the blinds just a bit. She found the posture that felt just right, and fell into the expression you see in the picture. As always, we sat for awhile in silence before I made the shot, waiting for the moment to unfold.
The untied shoelace and broken cookie on the floor were the perfect accidents I only noticed later.
- Cynthia Henebry