Body Photography Project

For my project, I decided to explore the idea of movement using the body. I used longboarding as my subject because it is an activity that I really enjoy and also one that involves unique types of movement. When I first learned to ride a longboard, I was surprised by how challenging it was to balance and move in the direction you want. It involves types of movements that do not necessarily come naturally. Longboarding is much harder than it looks when you see someone moving fast by you on the sidewalk. Stopping this motion in photos and looking at the progression as you move reveals a lot about how the body changes position, rather than simply standing still on the board.

            This project was also about personal photography because I took images of myself doing something that I enjoy and is important to me. For me, riding a longboard or seeing images of it brings back memories of my first two years of college, when my friends and I would ride together almost every weekend. These images, then, mean having fun and good times with friends to me on a personal level.

            How the human body moves when engaged in various activities has been of interest to photographers for a long time. My project was influenced by the work of photographer Eadweard Muybridge, who explored how the body moves. He did this by taking many images of people in rapid succession as they moved. At the time, this was revolutionary work because movies were not yet common, so people had not seen photographic images that involved movement. Using technology that Muybridge did not have at the time, I was able to combine multiple images into one rather than placing them side-by-side as he did in his work. By setting my camera on a tripod and setting it to take pictures continuously, I was able to freeze the movement in each frame. I then superimposed the images in Photoshop to show the progression as one seamless image.

 

Documentary

I chose to explore the historic buildings of downtown Tucson’s El Presidio district in my documentary. This area of Tucson has a rich history from Spanish colonial times through modern day, and the buildings and structures that exist there show evidence of that history. While this area is only a few miles from the University of Arizona, I had never visited there in the two years I have been at U of A, and I think that is probably true for most students who are not from Tucson. Walking around this neighborhood, I noticed how much modern urban structures have impacted the historical nature of many of the buildings. Office buildings and parking garages peek out behind old adobe houses and parking meters and traffic signs line the sidewalk beside the reconstructed Presidio wall. However, these two elements are not at odds with each other; rather they appear to exist in harmony and form a composite that is the basis of Tucson’s history and culture. This coexistence of historical and modern elements was the focus of these photographs. I think it is important to recognize how much of this culture exists just outside the U of A, and students would find it interesting to explore this area and learn more about Tucson’s history. As students, we tend to live in a bubble that extends just outside of campus, but there is a lot more to Tucson that just the University of Arizona.