Div/ided: A Senior Listener Lyric Photographic Diptych by Syd Biros (2017)

For my Citizen Diptych I chose to explore the concept of being on the political spectrum. My subject is someone who identifies as not liberal but not one hundred percent conservative either. I focused on the feeling of being somewhere in the middle of the spectrum as that is not an identity that is seen a lot in the Silicon Valley and in media.

I chose the lines “You try and be friendly, but people have already made up their mind” because it evokes the emotion of trying to create a dialogue, but being turned down. I chose the photo of the child on the swing to accentuate the feeling of being separated from your peers. I chose to colorize the child in a red sweater because red is often associated with the Republican party. This helps show that even from a young age, the subject was labeled something that he did not necessarily believe in. I edited this photo in Photoshop by putting a black and white filter on and hand colorizing the child. I created the text design in Illustrator.