RYANN COOLEY

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Living in a culturally mixed family has challenged my perceptions of self, family, and community paired with responsibilities and identity. Bridging collectivism and individualism through cultural constructs reveals thought-provoking–yet beautiful–tensions within the dynamics of relationships. Creating the portraits involves digitally merging 5 - 8 individuals–sharing the same ethnicity–into a single image subverting the individual's identity while leaving a residue of the process suggesting the presence of a community. The final portrait reflects the idea of both the collective and individual. Presenting the image upside-down draws attention to the photograph's physicality. The glass sphere–the size of the human eye–reveals the image in the corrected orientation connecting the work with the phenomenon of human perception. This series welcomes dialog about tensions between collective and individual cultures and how these mindsets are perceived and reconciled within an individual.