My listener lyric essay represents the perspective of a young girl who was adopted by a family of a different race. The quote I chose to incorporate into my diptych was “I just sometimes feel uncomfortable.” Through my interviewee, I learned more about the challenges that an individual faces when growing up in a different setting than society assumes.
My photo shows an African-American girl at soccer practice kicking the ball by herself, with her teammates behind her facing away from her. I chose this image to exemplify my quote, “I just sometimes feel uncomfortable” because, beyond the fact that she is at practice with her team, I shot the image through a fence. Due to that, there are blurry lines that separate the girls from one another. I thought that the blurry lines were a good representation of the boundaries put in place by society, especially when it comes to race. Also due to the fact that she was the only African-American girl on the team, she stands out as someone who doesn’t look like others around her. The fact that her teammates are looking elsewhere also evokes a feeling of isolation and some sadness, however, the girl doesn’t look upset to be by herself - she is almost a bit content - and appears to have a sense of belonging. These feelings are meant to contradict each other as do the challenges of living and being brought up in a different setting than you are supposed to, due to societal ideology.
To edit my photo, I used Adobe Photoshop. First, I created a mask of my main subject; adding some color to her clothes and making her pop a bit more. I made the rest of my image black and white so that she was the only thing that had color. Creating a selection of my main subject, I copied her onto a blank canvas to make my diptych. I made her a black silhouette and then inserted the quote, “I just sometimes feel uncomfortable” onto her silhouette. To make the text fit, I rasterized it and then used the warp tool to manipulate the text to make it stretch and reach the edge of her silhouette, while still being readable.
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