Alienation

My thesis. Printed on 8x10 fiber paper using traditional litho film halftone processing from screen printing screens. The aim of these photos is to evoke an emotional distance from the world these subjects build. Though they are everyday sights, the scenes feel cold, distant, and alien to our own world.

The world we live in insane, all the infrastructure we take for granted, access to electricity, clean water, quick travel. How we see these technologies, this progress of our species in this modern world reflects how we feel about it. With a paranoid mindset, a fearful mindset, the world will seem incredibly cold and scary. With a different perspective, we see all things in a different light. Are we looking at the golden age of humanity, or the downfall of society?

I tried to look at the world through paranoid eyes for this project. This allowed me to achieve this kind of distance. There are no people in these images, we are only present in an intangible way through these things we’ve created. The world we’ve created can be a very dark place, depending on your perspective. It can be easy to forget that in good times. It can be really easy to take that for granted if you’ve never experienced the world this way.

These images are made using the traditional darkroom technique of half-toning, where an image is simplified into a matrix of monotone dots. I slightly modified the approach to achieve this specific look I was going for in this project, check out the specifics of the process here!