Jennifer Zwick

Constructed Narrative

My constructed-narrative photographs are nonlinear short stories. They focus on bizarrely adventurous young girls populating beautiful but uneasy worlds. To create these images, I draw from childhood fantasies and memories, then construct life-sized environments. By pushing these scenarios to an extreme conclusion, the girls become metaphors for our hyper-real childhood selves, where remembered emotions become stronger through time.

(Jennifer Zwicks artists statement on Constructed Narrative.)

The Explorers, 2005

Archival pigment print
40" x 32"

The Reader, 2005

Archival pigment print
40" x 32"

I love these images, they're beautiful little stories on how inquisitive we all can be. Still however we can still feel a danger lurking, We know that girls just cannot go exploring on their own and who supplied the books within the woods? Because of my research I know exactly how these are created for she supplies this information to us - be if we view these just as narrative we wonder, how did she get there? Why is she on her own? Viewing this artist has made me want to break my boundaries and actually step outside. Open up my imagination to create some weird and wonderful things. 

http://www.opb.org/artsandlife/article/in-narrative-photo-exhibition-every-picture-tells-a-story/

The photos in the exhibition — 64 works from 23 photographers from around the United States — use metaphor, open-ended narrative and subtle manipulation to inspire stories in the viewers’ imaginations. The photos provide the building blocks, but the narrative remains open to/for interpretation. 

Alice

"Quaint girl, old fashioned Alice, lend your dream.
I would be done with modern story spinners,
Follow with you the laughter and the gleam:
Weary am I, this night, of saints and sinners.
We have been friends since lewis and old tenniel.
Housed your immorality in red and gold.
Come! Your naivete is a spring perennial.
Let me young again, before I am old.

You are a glass of youth, this night I choose.
Deep in your magic labyrinth to stray.
Where rants the red queen in her splendid hues.
And the white rabbit hurries on his way.
Let us once more adventure, hand in hand.
Give me belief again, in wonderland!

- Vincent Scarlett, in Brillig.

Alice in Wonderland has been the focus for many artworks, its sereal tale of adventures are exciting as well as inspirational. I for one love Alice, I wanted to be her as a little girl to escape the monotonous of the religious rules I had been drenched in throughout the years. She was exciting, a rebel, meeting talking animals and other psychedelic things. What is more exciting? However, although beautiful there is some ugliness and tremendous creepiness within this seemingly innocent childhood story.

Anna Gaskell quotes,
"So complicated and mysterious, we don't know anything about it, but we know enough, there is the possibility of child abuse, his longing for her, I like the danger about it and at some point I liked the world she lived in."

This in a quote is what I want to represent in my photographs, this seemingly innocentness but with the thought that something just isn't right. I want to present unease in my audience.

Lamps and Lights

Working purely with narrative has opened up a lot of ideas for me, i do not feel pressured to find an ideal. Instead I can be open to experiment with any idea I think fit. I had originally had created some photographs with myself and a friend as a model using the light of my lamp. I liked the atmosphere it created and decided to create a few more photographs working with the lamp as a prop. Narrative is an interesting and exciting theory to use, I have to imagine what my audience would be thinking and what they could be imagining. Would think there is something disturbing about my photography or will they believe that there is innocence within these staged scenes?  

Another Photoshoot

I wanted to try something  little different for this photoshoot. Here I decided to remove the person and leave an absence of what could have been. This was just a test run but I do like the photos that have been created. You wonder what are the clothes doing there? Why have they been found in the trees? Why are the shoes so neatly placed..? Is this a crime scene? Have the lovers flung their clothes off in desire led frenzy?

I also decided to edit these a little differently then before. Taking Anna Gaskell as an inspiration I began to make the colors seem a lot deeper and darker, making an seemingly ordinary situation seem foreboding and eeiry.

The next step for me will to develop this a little more, perhaps adding a human form somewhere within the shot but not a prominent part. For example a pair of legs peeping out from behind the bench. Playing with the sinister and the way our mind sees things.

Anna Gaskell

http://www.utata.org/sundaysalon/anna-gaskell/

Obviously, these images are staged. Gaskell is recreating a scene she sees in her mind. They aren’t reality; they’re a representation of reality. Because the scenes in the photographs lack context…because the viewer isn’t privy to the beginning or the ending of the scene…they convey an enigmatic urgency. They spark a powerful need for more information while denying the viewer all access to more information.

Another photo-shoot involving myself

Here I tried to go for a different kind of photo shoot, firstly I have used myself throughout all the shots, working with a more personal up-close and abstract feel. Focusing more on the objects or pieces of clothes rather then the person themselves. Wanting to create a narrative: An unspoken story.