Open Gate: A Senior Listener Lyric Photographic Diptych by Teagan Cimring (2017)

My listener lyric titled “Open Gate” represents the life of a young boy in an orphanage. It shows how different someone's life can be and how unexpected things may happen and flip your whole world upside down. I learned from my interview subject that his time in the orphanage has deeply affected the way he lives now.

My essay narrative is from second person where the main character is simply addressed as “you”. This is so that the reader feels as if I am writing about them or so that they can better put themselves into the shoes of the actual person. My essay starts from my interviewee’s young life after his father left his family. His mother did not have enough money to support him and his two brothers and so she put them into an orphanage. His mother came to visit him every other week which was his favorite part of his childhood. I chose the passage “As the day approaches you are restless and your mind is clouded with the image of her soft, sweet smile. She always brings you and your brothers a slab of chocolate to share. You try to savor your piece so that it will last you until the next visit, but you always eat it as soon as you return behind the walls”. The interviewee looked forward to his mother’s visit every other week and she always brought him chocolate. I was inspired by this passage to create a photograph that represents promise and trust. This is why I chose to photograph keys and books to symbolize the bond between the interviewee and his mother.

In my diptych I created the color in the photograph by using the pen tool to select over the black and white layer I placed over my photograph. I then created a selection and deleted the black and white layer to reveal the color underneath. I chose the font in the key because I wanted something that looked traditional and somewhat old as the person that I interviewed is now elderly and these are stories of his childhood. I created my text block in Illustrator using the warp text tool and various shapes to place the text inside the key. I then converted this into a png and placed it in photoshop to create my final diptych.