It has been nice over the past few days to revisit a project from the first year of the MFA in Photography I was lucky to complete a few years ago, during my time at Belfast School of Art.
Lentamente el Camino Me Mata or Slowly the Way Kills Me is the product of a deep dive inside to see what stirred… Perhaps first some context or caveats.
As a working artist my focus whether in drawing, painting, photographing or designing has always been client/product/style focused. I pour myself into the problem and through passion and exertion, get to as satisfying a result as time and collaboration allow. While the creation of the work feels extremely personal there is nothing personal in the work.
An MFA is an undertaking in itself, but it was also an opportunity to deconstruct and/or disassemble and rethink my process and start again.
Lentamente el Camino Me Mata or Slowly the Way Kills Me is a resolution of year one’s work. The goal was to move from a process that was external to a process that is initiated internally but manifests itself externally. Being curious in the process of deconstruction can be more dangerous than just jumping in blind and blowing shit up on the way down. Being curious meant poking and prodding all the little things that held the bigger things in place. Design Thinking is a powerful tool when turned toward yourself and at some point it too was left behind on the way back out of the darkness. The result is a sequence of photographs that traverse a state of mind that I was experiencing at the time.
The success of the project is less important than the development of the process that has evolved through it and subsequent projects both during and since completing the MFA.
You can see the project here.