washed up

artist statement:

One particularly sunny day in February, my dad and I drove up to our beach house. I had the idea of taking portraits by the ocean. I saw the raw emotion and identity that other film photographers have shown through their photos, and I wanted to do the same. At the time, I was sure that I was showing loneliness and boredom, but through analyzing the final product days later, I realized I have shown much more than that. Rather than representing boredom and the fear of being alone, I am illustrating the feeling of being immobilized due to the threatening yet beautiful world around me as a young girl. Life is crooked and awkward, and it is never perfect and often frightening, especially as a sixteen year old. Media, news and social life all are thrashing and thundering. Just as the ocean, picking you up and spitting you out. Yet we enjoy it, it’s exciting and interesting; only sometimes it ends in drowning and getting water up your nose. The final and lasting result however is being washed up on the shore. There, the blinding wonder of life just seduces you to jump back in the ocean once more, and you are stuck in between.

—Gabrielle Harty