Conceptual Photography

  

 

     My conceptual photograph is titled “We Didn’t Start the Fire.” This is a reference to the popular Billy Joel song, as well as a gesture to both the literal and metaphorical fires rising worldwide due to environmental neglect. While the older generations believe that we’re naïve and obsessed with nothing but the media (hence the pop-culture reference in the title), it has fallen into the hands of young adults and literal children to protect our planet. We are expected to solve these problems, and yet are mocked when we fight and try to create change. 

    In this picture, a teenaged girl grasps protectively a solitary plant, while on the right side of the frame a hand with a lighter attempts to harm the plant and a hand on the left offers money in an attempt to bribe the young woman in the center to abandon her burden. Despite the commotion on either side of the frame, she glares defiantly at the camera with a single-minded purpose, ignoring the temptation on the left and guarding her charge from the danger on the right. The fiery hue of her hair is yet another callback to the flame motif, indicating that despite the fires all around, there is enough passion within us to outshine and quell all of them.    

    I placed my main subject in the center of the frame as a way for her to engage with the viewer directly, confronting them. Placing the disembodied hands on either side of the frame allowed me to create a sense of balance, a bush and pull that contrasts with the center figure. I chose to set the scene against a plain background in an effort to allow the main scene to stand out, and to emphasize the life in both the girl and the plant in contrast with her surroundings. In addition, the use of mainly orange and green tones provided not only a distinct contrast but played into my overall theme. The rule of thirds can be seen through the separation between the floor on the bottom third of the frame and the wall in the top two thirds. This image was taken on my Samsung 10ae and then edited using Adobe Lightroom. 

    Overall, my goal was to create a social commentary on the state of our planet and our position as the younger generation to assume responsibility for it, as well as the challenges we face in our fight for sustainability. We didn’t start the fire, and yet it falls on our shoulders to put it out.