LUMINESCENCE

Luminescence is the product of an opened-ended photography project where we had all creativity liberties. Inspired by the neon visuals of Sam Levinson's Euphoria, I decided to explore makeup, lighting and the visual representation of one's emotions. Equipped with gels for my lights, cotton, and lots of glitter and pearls, I began my exploration with a set that resembled clouds. I wanted to evoke the idea of ‘clouded judgement’ and used a mirror to accomplish this mindset. The farther I delved into my exploration, the clearer it became that I had a particular interest in mirrors. Posing my models in front of mirrors, an interesting thing began to occur. The mirrors started to become entry points or portals into what Marcel Rev would call ‘emotional realism,’ a visual representation of the world that is most focused on 'the characters’ emotions, and not how the world surrounding them really looks'. From there on, I explored different ways to incorporate mirrors into my images and shifted lighting and positioning based off of how each model interacted with the mirrors and the perception of their emotions.