Week Three - The World on A Stage

My photo series is called The World on A Stage. It is inspired by the Kitchen Table series by Carrie Mae Weems.

The series itself shows different scenes from a very intimate angle of the stage in Ingalls Recital Hall, my most frequent location featuring a piano and a stage. Despite having a noticeable amount of performance anxiety, I never feel more like myself than when I'm performing on stage. When I'm singing on stage to an audience, I always get the feeling that this is what I want to do for the rest of my life. Obviously, that's not all this career path is. For every moment I spend singing to an audience, there are countless moments the audience will never see of me huddled around a piano while I desperately try to figure out what my line is, me pouring over sheet music for the thousandth time to memorize the text, and the ones where I feel like giving up. It's not glamorous, and it keeps me tethered to the piano, to a performance or practice space for far longer than I should be. As much as a stage with a piano brings me comfort, it also serves as a reminder of everything else that comes with this life.

I wanted to capture that mix of emotions that the simple image of a stage and a piano bring me with my photo series. Sontag says that "Photographs really are experience captured, and the camera is the ideal arm of consciousness in its acquisitive mood," and "...photographs are as much an interpretation of the world as paintings and drawings are." As I previously mentioned, so many of these moments I captured go unseen by those who aren't involved. I wanted to use this series to show my own interpretation of that part of the experience.

The inspiration from Weems comes mainly from the composition. She used the same setting of her own dining table to tell a universal story, with the main character being one anyone can replace with themselves. Elisabeth Sann describes Weems' series saying "Everyone can relate to this work...memories from their childhood or scenes from their marriage or their family life." Weems' choice to use a consistent, intimate setting to tell multiple stories that are universal was something I attempted to recreate. While the exact setting may not be as universal as a dining table, any musician can relate to the exact scenes I've shown, and any artist can relate to the sentiments I captured during the creative process.

Feeling Buried

Learning

Cooperation

Alive