My Diptych

A diptych is a juxtaposition of two contrasting images used to represent one idea. In Design, we used photoshop to put together two of our own photos that we took to represent metaphors within our poem. They could not be straight forward and easily understandable. The pictures' meanings should have to be derived.

"The truth is written all over our faces."

Purpose of Assignement:

It's almost instinct for people to hide there emotions unless they are with people they trust. We do this in fear of judgement, because if anyone shows some emotion, some people take it as weakness. Secrets are only kept because of fear. My diptych is about seeing beyond the masks of neutral expressions to try to understand others.

Artist Statement:

“From wrinkles like dying wood, I see a real smile.”

“I see your knuckles struggle to be glaciers despite the heat.”

When photographing the picture on the left, I created an image that represents the emotion of happiness which is hidden in the words of my first line. The “wrinkles” mentioned in the line are meant to describe the lines around your eyes that you usually only see when somebody truly smiles rather than fakes one. That is why I took an image of a wrinkled hand with goldfish. The wrinkled fingers represent the lines around your eyes and the goldfish are added to increase the feeling of happiness. When working on the image on the right, I wanted to build something that could show anger. The second line I selected from my poem compares clenched knuckles to icebergs because of their color and the word “heat” is supposed to correspond with the feeling of experiencing anger. So I photographed a broken white mug. I chose a white mug to give a cold feeling like icebergs and tinted the photo in a warmer color to show the struggle of cold against warmth. I shattered the mug on the floor because breaking objects also gives off a sense of fury.

For the image on the left, I took somewhat of a macro shot of the hand because I wanted great detail in the image so any viewer could easily see the wrinkles in her skin and the texture of her hand. I chose a white door for the background to create a blank canvas to photograph over and I waited until the evening so the hand would create a nice shadow on the door because of the light shining in, almost horizontally, through the window. For my second image to the right, I used a shallow depth of field to focus on just one shard of the mug and put that on the side to prevent having the main subject in the middle of the image. I also used the light shining in from the window to have one half of the hardwood floor reflect a cool color and have the other reflect a warmer color to show struggle between hot and cold.