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Stranger: A Senior Surreal Photo by Elizabeth Miotke (2014)

In my surrealism piece, I chose to represent the destructive qualities of self-image. I show a crack in the road striking down into the ground, transforming and crumbling into black smoke. The crack represents someone's distorted but, supposedly ‘honest,' depiction of themselves and the altered perspective that can oftentimes be developed. The crack is then transformed into smoke because the crack has been destroyed to its full limit. To create this transformation, I cut the original image with the model using the pen tool from Photoshop. From there, I was able to place a picture of the center of the road as my background. Then, I used a non-copyrighted .PNG of black smoke found on Google, and overlapped it on top of the crack.

To start off, I chose contrasting colors of blue and red to show the most emphasis on certain objects. I use a red fence as the reflection in a mirror and a blue/grey road as my background. The less noticeable objects, for example, the model, are simply black and white to represent their desire to be less noticed. The model is holding a mirror away from her face with a red, splintered fence as the reflection to emphasize that she doesn't want to see herself. Additionally, there are cracks next to her on the side of the road to represent the model's destructive self-image. The model is consistently surrounded by road, creating the effect that she is stuck in a box and can't escape her distorted thoughts. On the background road, there is a close up of one crack, crumbling into dust. This represents the main message of how negatively people can view themselves.
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