Personification

Some researchers have noticed a great tendency among Synesthetes to personify fonts as well as other objects. I certainly share that trait as is evident in the titles of my work. My titles are the words that pop into my head when I look at images after I take them. Interestingly, those words never change. I can pick up a photo I haven't seen in ten years, and a title will pop into my head as if for the first time; only when I turn it over, I see that I wrote the exact same thing ten years before. It is unfailing and uncanny and true. The personification that pops into my head remains the same over time.

All of the houses I photograph in reflection look like people to me. Actually, they ARE people to me: windows are eyes; bridges are mouths, lights on water become dancers. Yet, my personifications are not self-conscious metaphors. Rather, they represent what I feel before I have time to think or correct my initial perception to match it to what other people take for granted. Secondarily, I know that I am photographing houses, not people. My tendency to personify inanimate objects is not limited to reflections or houses -- I pretty much do it with everything I look at including fonts on a page, which take on gender and personality.

In addition, there is a highly personal aspect to the personification process that creates an unusual collection of self-portraits for me. Different houses that I photograph represent different states of consciousness and unconsciousness that I travel into and out during my process. I watch changing patterns on moving water until the pattern takes on a form that matches what I feel; then, I shoot The image I bring home is a portrait of me or of how I felt when I snapped: I photograph my emotions. For more examples, please visit my galleries "Personification" and "Shapes I Become."