Photography and Text by Matt Garber, Copyright 2018
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(Dis-) Comfort
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Where do you belong? Where do you not? In a sense, answers to the two questions can help define individuals in an extremely powerful way. I set out to answer these two questions photographically in order to tell the stories of people around me. In creating two portraits per subject, I strove to capture the places, activities, ideas, and values in and outside of each person’s comfort zone. These photographs constitute my attempt to offer a glimpse into the stories of those around us.
Along this journey, I learned several lessons I simply did not expect to discover. First, the willingness of my friends and family to participate as subjects for my study was heartening. However, their willingness to go outside their comfort zones to do so was shocking. Through their occasional screams, shrieks, and heebie-jeebies, subjects were willing to face fears of creepy crawlers, climb into uncomfortable, constricting places, approach locations of bad childhood memories, be photographed at their most vulnerable, and even brave proximity to vegetables.
In fact, for many subjects, it was these scenes of discomfort that most excited them. Perhaps, in a way, pushing themselves into their discomfort zones offered a way to open up in ways they normally don’t. Or perhaps being a model for a photoshoot was simply exciting.s
Either way, I am extremely grateful for their willingness to participate and let me shine a small light on their stories. And I am especially grateful for their willingness to be exposed in the very light that they least want.
Second, I found that people often, although not exclusively, struggled more explicitly identifying their areas of comfort than their areas of discomfort. For many, but again not all, of the subjects, this project forced them to consider what makes them content. In that way, it demonstrates photography’s power to encourage self-reflection.
Finally, I found it quite interesting the role that hands played for many of the subjects’ portraits. The position, strength, motion, and action of hands became a minor focus once I noticed its pattern through many of the portraits.
Stylistically, I challenged myself, as much as possible, to be minimalist. How much can I show with how little? In doing so, there is a forced sense of intimacy, or, in several cases, a noteworthy lack thereof.
Everyone has a story to tell. I think that story can be told in two frames. My subjects and I chose the most and least belonging places for those two frames. In this way, the photographs declare that we can be defined in part by where or whom we ought to be and where and whom we ought not.
This forces the questions: Where are we comfortable? Where are we not? Where should we be? Where should we not?
Where do you belong? Where do you not?
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About The Author: Matt Garber is a Freshman enrolled in the College of the University of Pennsylvania, Class of 2020. To access additional articles by Matt Garber, click here: https://tonywardstudio.com/blog/matt-garber-picture-worth-140-characters/