Discover Thesis 2022
SOUTHEAST MUSEUM OF PHOTOGRAPHY
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Hi, my name is Shannon M. O'Regan,
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and my thesis work project is titled Oceanic Mystique.
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My project started in 2018
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when I was fortunate enough
to live four blocks from the beach
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and I was experiencing,
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to my utter dismay,
just the amount of trash that I was seeing
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that was either being left behind or washed up
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from from the waters of the Atlantic Ocean.
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It saddened me tremendously.
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And I think the thing
that was also surprising to me was I was watching
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the number of pedestrians that were walking
the beach that were
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seemingly ambivalent
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to the trash right at their very feet.
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And I started that a photographic reportage
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of just documenting the objects that I would find.
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And it continued to just kind of grow from that.
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And I, throughout my UCF career,
I've done a number of different projects
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specifically to the this beach trash
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or ocean debris or oceanic flotsam,
which is, you know,
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wreckage and things that have been washed ashore
from other sources and areas.
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And I wanted to
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really expand in drawing attention
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that our pollutant contributions
as human beings is not going away.
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And it really made me question
whether or not we really do care as a society
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or as a global entity
about environmental conservation, ecosystem
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preservation and just,
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you know, our fellow humans
and and that really concerned me.
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So I started to photograph it.
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And the more I photographed it,
the more it affected me.
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Oceanic Mystique is a culmination.
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It's like the next level project
that I've created about that's based
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on addressing environmental concerns
and mass consumer waste
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and the pollutants
that I was finding along the beach fronts.
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I was fortunate enough
to live very close to the beach
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while I was attending school here at UCF,
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and I was stunned and amazed
at the amount of trash that I was seeing
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that was either
left behind, had been washed ashore after a storm.
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But more importantly,
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I think the thing that was really concerning me
was the number of people that I was watching
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walk past all the trash
and just completely be immune to it.
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It inspired questions to ask myself, do we really,
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as a society care about environmental conservation
and ecosystem preservation?
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And I just am not entirely sure,
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and I wanted to explore that photographically.
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This particular series, Oceanic Mystique, what I do is
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I unabashedly take a very minimalistic approach
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and almost like looking at the objects
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that I have found on the beach at a macro level.
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The objects themselves are literally
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no larger than the palm of my hand.
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And yet I found them, and yet they are there.
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And yet, wildlife eats it.
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And yet it is deteriorating and contributing
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to the deterioration of quality of our
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our shore, our waters,
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and just creating
added pollutants to the environment.
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And one of the things that really was on
my mind was about our affinity for mass
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consumerism and materialism
because the objects in this particular series
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are man made objects.
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Marine debris is described
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as objects that are human made
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that have then been abandoned or discarded
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whether voluntarily, involuntarily or not.
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And they have then since become part
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of the environment in the water in the sand,
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in the atmosphere, and they end up eroding,
corroding and transforming
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even themselves,
as well as polluting wherever they have been.
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And that is what these objects are about.
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I'm examining them in a
in a very minimalistic way.
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And yet I've glamorized them and intentionally
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attempted to glamorize and romanticize them in a way
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to call the attention that we as a society
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seem to really continue to love our junk. And
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and yet so
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if we do that if we if we really do seem to do
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that, these objects would cease to exist.
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These objects transform where they are
almost completely unrecognizable.
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We don't know what they really were initially.
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But moss has grown.
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They've rusted, barnacles attach themselves.
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They become sources for other wildlife
to cling onto and subsequently
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then continue to pollute the environment.
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I was fascinated by it.
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I took the objects initially from photographing them in place,
in raw documentary style.
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I wanted to take them
and photograph them in studio
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with natural light and artificial light
and using
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reflection and light and shadow to,
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you know, romanticize and glamorize these objects
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as a way of kind of poking fun
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of our love for trash and our love for junk.
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And while we may not admit that
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inherently by our behavior
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of this, of trash being so ever present
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and continuing to create it, we do.
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It really speaks to the ideologies
of materialism and capitalism
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and those things
I just find to be very compelling
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I was inspired by David Maisel,
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who had once said that as an artist,
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it is our responsibility to call the attention
and raise the awareness of these issues,
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even though we may not individually be able
to solve them.
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And that's paraphrasing his words.
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But I was really struck by that.
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And one of the things that I wanted to do
was examine, like many other artists do,
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how else can I present a body of work
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in a way that might trigger or spark an interest
even in one person?
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Because sometimes all it takes
is one person to change their behavior
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or to look more conscientiously
when they're out on the beach
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or they're walking along their local neighborhood
and they see something on the pavement
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that they might actually think twice about,
even just picking it up,
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as opposed to walking by, ignoring it
and acting as if it doesn't exist.
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And I know that for me has been a game changer.
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I don't leave my house without a bag
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to pick up objects that fall in my path.
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I'm heartbroken when I watch a bird trying to eat
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what it's what it believes to be a worm.
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But it's a fishing lure
that's been abandoned in the water.
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And I find that to be really interesting.
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And I started with photographing things,
as I mentioned, just photographic
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reportage, documentary style, just as I found it.
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And I intentionally would then observe passers
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by just walking past it
and just be oblivious to its existence.
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And then from there what I did was another project
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that was in studio.
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It was a week's worth of trash, seven days.
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And each morning
I would collect the trash and then I would
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photograph it in
still life portraiture in studio.
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And that was disgusting.
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It was gross, but it was really impactful.
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It even became increasingly impactful for me.
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And I think as a visual artist
and a creative visual creative,
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you continue to I continue
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to get immersed in the work, and it matters-
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it continues to mean something to me.
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And yet sometimes I also feel
that I feel increasingly helpless about it.
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But my hope is that
the work will speak to someone else as well,
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that they too might be impacted to
maybe do things a little differently,
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increase their own activism, getting involved
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in community projects,
educate themselves about the effects
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of what we leave behind,
and the long term effects and impact it has.
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What I'm fascinated by is
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the unknown origin of the objects,
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the unknown origin of what the object actually is,
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how it came to be
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at my finding, and what its original purpose
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is, and also how it has been transformed
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in this unrecognizable way by being exposed
to the environment and the elements.
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And I think that's what's really interesting to me
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is that each one of those objects,
we don't really know what it is.
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And by my treatment of using light, shadow
and reflection,
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I expand on that a little bit.
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And I even continue to transform it in a way
and there is one image
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which is a twisted piece of plastic
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that with the shadow and reflection,
it's looking a little bit like a dinosaur
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which kind of speaks a little,
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poking fun of evolution
and how far we've come,
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how far we've gone, and really questioning where we may end up.
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Each image, I photographed hundreds of different ways.
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Different time of day
using different reflection,
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adding different reflective entities
to it, casting different shadows on it.
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And that in and of itself
became actually a fun, creative outlet.
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But that particular piece, I couldn't
stop photographing it because every which way
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I was turning it and moving it
just to position it,
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it was just taking on a life of its own.
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And I found that to be a little ironic, actually.
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There was another object that is it's
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I have no idea what it is,
and yet it's color in and of itself.
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It's a piece of plastic and it's red.
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And I have no idea what its purpose is.
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And it's the one thing
that has been virtually unchanged
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with the exception of oceanic
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barnacles and sea life is beginning
beginning to attach itself to it.
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And plastic, as we know,
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doesn't deteriorate, it doesn't decompose.
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What it ends up doing is
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just breaking down because it's being battered
around in the environment.
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And so it just continues to be a pollutant.
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And this little object is pretty much intact.
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So it looks like it
may not have been around very long
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but it's already beginning a transformation
that it's being identified
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as something viable to the
to the natural environment.
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I think I'm going to be exploring different
opportunities to present the work either in group
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exhibitions or a solo exhibition, along with themes
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of mass consumerism, social consciousness,
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environmental issues and,
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ecosystem conservation and themes
along those lines where this work can be
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a contributing visual experiment
and a visual evidence
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I think the one thing
that I would really just like to add
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is my gratitude and my appreciation
for to be for this work to be able to be exhibited
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here at the Southeast Museum of Photography
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and that the group
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and the team here has been so gracious
in putting the exhibition together
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the thesis exhibition for, I think this is year 11,
and I think it's really, really special.
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I'm honored to be a part of it
and it's really been a thrill
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and to see my own work
for the first time on gallery walls
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and that's that's memorable
and I'm really appreciative of that.