This work is an 8" x 10" double exposure artwork. It was created by Lesley Etherson. The title is, "Dead but not Forgotten." The work was created in Media Arts 2 class in May, 2016. I used Adobe Photoshop Elements 11 to create this work, and my self portrait photograph taken with a Sony Nex-5 camera. The photo was manipulated in Photoshop using masks, blend modes, and the levels adjustment layers. I integrated photos that I found on the Photos for Class website, and from Google Earth. The image of the man was taken from a you tube video. . The resource images are below. I used a cool color scheme to pull all the images in my composition together, and to also represent the water in my story. I used aged faded grid paper to show that this story happened a long time ago, I enhanced the saturation of the colors to make them stand out more, and I changed the colors of my eyes to match the color scheme of the artwork. The google earth image was a screen shot of the actual location of the story. It is a small river in Connel, Scotland.
This image tells my story about finding a dead body when I was swimming in the river on the map. I was only 12 when it happened. I did not know the man that had drowned. There had been a midsummer's night party at the river the night before. I was not there. The next morning I went down to the river to clean up the mess that had been left behind. There were lots of bottles and cans thrown all over the place, including in the river. I had brought my mask and snorkel with me, because this was our local swimming hole. I was swimming on the bottom of the riverbed, I picked up a can and turned around to swim to the surface, and I banged into the foot of the drowned man. All I really remember at this point was that he was wearing one sock, and he was floating about a foot off the bottom of the river bed. It was one of the most traumatic experiences of my childhood. The silhouette of the man symbolizes the dead man that I found in the river. the placement of him over my head is to symbolize that the memory of that day has always been on my mind. I deliberately made him cover a large part of my face and head to symbolize how much of an impact it had on me as a small child. The cool color scheme was used to emphasize the cold water and the cold feeling I had for the longest time after that event. I repeated this color throughout the composition in my eyes and I put a cool photo filter over the finished composition to make even the warm colored graph paper a little cooler. The story is tragic. A man died.. His friends didn't even realize that he had drowned. They continued partying and then went home. No one even noticed that he was missing. The story could be a metaphor for people that are ignored by others until it is too late to make them feel included. This experience is still a strong memory for me. I partially determined who I am as a person today. I spend a lot of my life teaching children to swim, water safety, and life guarding in the hope that this never happens to anyone else. Writing this story and creating this piece of art has been cathartic for me. It . I finally feel that I have let go of the fear and anger associated with this story. I feel that the work is a success, and in more ways that I expected. technically it follows all the criteria of the project. It demonstrates understanding of manipulation of the elements of art to create a composition that is meaningful and technically well made. I do not think that anyone that does not know the story would understand it just from looking at the image, but the silhouette is foreboding enough for the viewer to get a sense of dread just by looking at it. While the double exposure technique is not original the story this project is telling is. It is personal and powerful. To help others judge the work I think it would be helpful to know the whole story behind the artwork.
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AuthorMy name is Ms. Etherson. I teach Media Arts 2 at ArchivesCategories |