madison eich

One day in psychology class, I learned about the concept of deindividuation: when a person loses his/her self-awareness in large groups. I relate to this concept when I’m walking through the halls at Howard High School. There are so many people and so little space that I feel like I’m in a herd of cows just being led to my destination. I feel like I lose who I am and just turn into a face in the crowd. People who I know pass me but don’t even say hi because of the overwhelming influx of faces and sounds. This feeling inspired the artwork for the word “identity”. 

 

I showcased the main character in this photo in the halls at Howard sitting down in one spot while everything around her kept moving. My artwork shows this because it displays the feeling I get when I lose my sense of self in the crowd. I start feeling like no one really sees me and that in that moment, my presence isn’t really relevant. 

 

I used the long exposure technique to capture the mass of people in the hallways. I wanted to convey an overwhelming feeling around the main character in the artwork and I also wanted the crowd to be very impersonal. The long exposure effect conveyed this the best way because no person/faces in the background can be distinguished. All you can see is the blur of the crowd. I wish to further increase my knowledge and ability to do long exposures in the future to hopefully grasp and execute the concept even better.