THESIS: 2022
May 3rd - July 29th, 2022
Portfolios by graduating seniors in the B.S. Degree program in Photography at the University of Central Florida.
Now in its eleventh year, the UCF Thesis Exhibition showcases portfolios by graduating seniors of the Bachelor of Science in Photography program at the University of Central Florida - Daytona Beach. The UCF – DSC partnership provides students the opportunity to work with a diverse professional faculty in an environment that encourages excellence and innovative approaches to photography that will position graduates to compete in a rapidly changing industry.
Featuring the work of:
Aaron Cleveland • Eli Dreyfuss • Cameron Fox • Lynn Miller
Tina Olko • Shannon M. O’Regan • Alexis Quesada • Raphael Seabra
Jacob Sierra • Juliana Ulloa • Houston White
VIEW THE THESIS 2022 ONLINE ZINE HERE!
(For the best viewing experience, view in full-screen!)
MEET THE ARTISTS
AAron cleveland
Pieces of My Newest Tapestry
Recently, I have been feeling lost. I have spent the past five years living a weekly repetition with very few changes happening in my world. I always knew what was coming next for me and if I did not, I could easily figure it out. The world was predictable and reliable, albeit a little stagnant at times.
But now, as I come into a new and unknown phase in my life, I have no idea where I am going, and the lack of direction and control makes me feel scared and lost. For the first time in years, I do not have any idea where I am going and what I am doing. So now, I am fighting to find my place in the world, and within myself.
This project is a culmination of the means of self-rediscovery I have used in the past. Often, I used my creative nature to help me find peace and allow me time to recenter myself and determine the direction I needed to follow. The act of creating has always given me a sense of control in a world that often feels chaotic. Everything that I created acted as a landmark that reminded me of the path I followed that led me to where I was in life. While I could not see or know my future, I could both see and shape my past in a way that redirected me to where I needed to go, using new methods to craft each closing chapter.
In the beginning, it was knitting and sewing that brought me peace, but then photography became my way of finding myself once again. And now, in these images, what is more important than everyday subject matter is the journey I take to try to rediscover who I am and where I am going. I invite you along on my journey. Where my destination is, I do not yet know, but I am learning to enjoy creating my future once again.
Eli Dreyfuss
The Connection Point
Connection. It’s the thing that binds people together. It’s the thing we yearn for, that can often feel out of reach.
Because of my shy demeanor and introspective personality, my ability to form genuine connections with others has been a constant struggle. But with the power of photography, it enables me to build meaningful connections with teachers, friends, and creative collaborators who have all had a tangible impact on my life.
From the image of my first film teacher to my Rabbi, each portrait in this series reflects how just one word, one action, one connection can have on someone's life. By paying personal homage to these individuals, I aim to bridge the connection gap between me, the person standing in front of my lens, and the viewer, ensuring their story and their impact is appreciated.
Bailey Fox
Transcendental View
It is not fully understood how the brain works, but what is becoming increasingly clear to scientists is that memories are dynamic. When recalling memory, the brain actively recreates it. The yellow of a flower might gradually fade in memory as other aspects of the memory like scent or texture raise in importance. The brain must filter out the noise of every experience to create memories. Each time a memory is recalled it changes and breaks down the original truth experience. As I reminisce, I am presented with nothing more than indistinct images that disappear when I try to examine more closely.
Every image from Transcendental View has been fabricated by a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN). This form of artificial intelligence has studied hundreds of landscape photographs which I made, and returned a set of images based on what it thinks my photographs look like. I have complete creative control over curation of what AI images are shown. The results are recognizable, but upon further inspection, they feel slightly off. These landscapes are slightly misremembered, as if they are produced from their own independent reality. These AI images hold no stories about the journey, the smell of the grass, the sounds of the wind, or the people I was with. The GAN mirrors the human brain process recreating and updating memories, revealing that the difference between the real and simulation is unclear.
Lynn Miller
Sexes Sell
Who you are is not who you choose to be. The influences of cultural and societal expectations may have played more of a part than you realized. Of the roles given to you one of the most impactful is your gender.
Everyone is affected by gendered messaging that we receive throughout childhood and this affects our identity and choices for the rest of our lives. Products are often designed, created, and marketed with gender stereotypes at the forefront. This body of work is both a personal reflection on how I was socialized as a girl as well as how gender norms affect society as a whole as seen through products.
The effect of our toxic societal relationship with gender norms is evident in surface level features such as the color and design of products marketed for boys versus girls, but also in the types of roles that these products assign to us. Toys designed for young girls are often focused on beauty, caretaking, and housework while toys designed for boys are focused on discovery, action, and adventure. As adults, gendered products continue to affect us and how we express ourselves. Food packaging marketed towards men and women shapes our body image, sending the message that women must be thin and men must be strong. In these images, I reflect upon moments that are pivotal in one’s development of gender identity and how the gendered expectations of products and their use have played a role in that.
Tina Olko
Lifting the Veil
“Imagination is more important than knowledge,'' Albert Einstein once said. This resonates with me because I approach life with wonderment and curiosity. I let my mind wander, daydreaming about the vistas I encounter.
I have discovered a dual way of seeing nature using my infrared camera. I venture outside, opening my world with a different set of eyes as if a veil has been lifted. Here, my mind and creativity are free to expand. A shift occurs from the notions of traditional flora and fauna to a much more fanciful landscape only reserved for dreams and other worlds. Familiar objects transform into something foreign or unrecognizable. Passageways through the landscape entice me to venture onward as each twist and turn leads to a new discovery. Photographing in this manner allows me to slow down, create stories about my environment, and look at things through a different lens called imagination.
Shannon M. O’Regan
Oceanic Mystique
In 2018, I began a photographic reportage documenting the comedy and tragedy of objects I discovered, to my dismay, left behind, ignored, or washed ashore along the beachfront. For me, questions emerged: Does environmental preservation, ecosystem conservation, or issues of mass consumerism really matter to us? How attentive are we of our surroundings? Do we really care?
The pictorials I create of marine debris examines both human behavior and the physical transformation human-made solid materials undergo when found along coastlines. My approach is to seek fresh ways of visually articulating the ever-rising derelict pollutant that is waterway flotsam, mass consumer waste, and its effect on the earth’s biological community while simultaneously attempting to answer those questions. The imagery I continue to amass has changed how I perceive and engage with the world around me. Each image of a seemingly banal piece of trash oddly becomes a philosophical wonderment, an elevated image of geometric beauty possessing the stark reminder of its destructive, contaminant voyage prior to meeting my lens.
In Oceanic Mystique, I unabashedly take an aesthetically minimalistic approach to this photography with a purpose, one that is both satirical in visual absurdity, yet mysterious in its identity or origin. Using light, shadow, and reflection, I turn fragments of marine debris into alluring, seductive objets d’art. In this way, I intimately glamorize and romanticize our ceaseless love of beach trash while continuing to directly confront the global social conscience about our collective environmental duplicity within capitalist consumerism and materialistic ideologies.
Alexis Quesada
You & I Are Earth
You & I Are Earth is about my connection with nature. Throughout my life, this connection has allowed me to tap into a curiosity and a deeper experience of self. It has always felt like a space where I am able to soften, decompress, and let go. The migration of birds, the changes of seasons, and the smell of pine sap in the air has a way of focusing my attention and allowing me to be present in this space, untethered from the stresses and daily distractions. Nature is filled with both life and death. Just as a hawk is catching its next meal a new flower may bloom. These photographs reflect many of my experiences in nature and my belief that when people interact with it in a loving and respectful way, there are benefits to both the people and the natural world.
I created these photos using the anthotype process which involves using plant matter as a light sensitive emulsion. Each image is one of a kind and made from a variety of plants such as turmeric, spinach, beets, and blackberries. By using these plant materials in the actual photographs, I am making a tangible, reciprocal connection to the natural world which I am honoring in the images. I gravitated towards this process because it is ephemeral. Over time these anthotypes fade as they are exposed to daylight, until they are lost completely. Because of the ephemeral nature of this photographic process, I reproduced the images as archival inkjet prints which preserve this temporal process. The fragile nature of the original print, now lost to time, echoes the life cycles of nature.
Raphael Seabra
Interior Exterior
In life, throughout our proudest moments, accolades, and accomplishments there lies a common factor leading up to these events: hardship. Although hardships propel us towards success, the traumas we carry from them can feel unshakeable.
Within these images, I present the emotional states that came as a result of the adversities that have affected my mental health. Storing these emotions that originate from moments of discomfort, instead of having a release of these tensions can take a toll physically and emotionally. This work is my release of tension.
During the making of this series, I found myself recovering memories I subconsciously hid. After reassessing these recovered memories, I began to realize how deeply they have affected me and pushed me into becoming who I am today. The negative experiences have made the most memorable experiences feel all the better. The duality displayed by personal success coming directly from negative incidents inspired this series.
My photographs represent important moments throughout my life layered over items, places, and people of equal emotional value to convey my emotions during those time periods. In doing so, I have shared the emotional states I go through in hopes of promoting vulnerability and conversations centering around mental health.
Jacob Sierra
ExagGerated Moments
Forced. Straightforward. Uniform. Predictable.
These are the words that make illustrating the conventional idea of what photography is so difficult for me. I am more comfortable when looking through the lens of a camera; my perspective of the world changes. What seems forced becomes more fluid, what’s meant to be straightforward becomes distorted. The order of uniformity is transformed into illogical beauty and the captured moment is all that remains predictable. This is powerful to me because time is something precious, we never get back. Through my photography, I seek to exaggerate this captured moment and demonstrate its rarity, its meaning, its awkwardness, and its unconventional nature.
Juliana Ulloa
Reminiscencia
This series of photo montages reflects on some of the memories I cherish most. The most abrupt change in my life happened four years ago when I moved from Colombia to the United States to pursue my career in photography. In the past four years I have met many wonderful people and seen great places, yet there are many things about home that I miss. My Abu's cottage in Melgar, where I would go to often over the weekends to enjoy the hot weather with my family. My mom waking me up in the morning to go to school, then riding my bike through the cold foggy morning.
The 45 minute bus rides to Bogota with my friend Angie, just to grab some coffee and wander around while daydreaming about our futures. This nostalgic feeling is not unusual, missing where you grew up is something that affects many people. But moving to another country at a pivotal point in my life makes this even more intense. There is still a bittersweet taste in moving away from home but I've grown so much since then. I will always carry these memories with me.
My intention in creating these photo montages started by going through the photographs that I have taken over the years, selecting memories that make up a scene that marries both of these places and people I have known on both sides into a single image. I wanted to cut the photos myself to be closer to them and carefully create a scenario that could only become tangible by this process. Putting together people and places across space and memory is a way for me to merge who I am now with my past.
Houston White
Fool’s Gold
Pyrite is a mineral that was given the name ‘fool’s gold’ because it looked so similar to gold. Some may see something valuable but a closer inspection reveals it is not.
What do we consider valuable in life? I indulged in expensive purchases trying to be relevant, obtain status and individuality. I realized I was buying things due to the influence of social media and those around me, I discovered these things have no true value beyond the monetary investment. I analyzed why I wanted them; was it something I really enjoyed or how I thought others might react to it? The real gold in life is not found in items and popularity but community, family and relationships. This doesn’t mean I don’t indulge in fancy dinners or nice clothes but the reason for it has changed.
My work reflects the psychological reasons for purchases of popular products. Do we truly want these things or does the world say we should want these things? What Is your personal value in fools’ gold? Can you tell the difference?
THESIS 2022 VIDEO WALKTHROUGH
Sponsored in part by the State of Florida, Department of State,
Division of Cultural Affairs and the Florida Council on Arts and Culture.