Kelly Reynolds – Photography Competition

Artist Portfolio Magazine – 2017 Photography Competition

Kelly Reynolds – Gainesville, FL

In this series I abandoned my digital camera in favor or working with the One Step 600 and Spectra Polaroid cameras. With these tools I created fuzzy sensuous images that reflect a melancholic sentimental longing or nostalgia that borders around kitsch. Marks and imperfections on the photos created in the instant process instill a sense of specialness and spontaneity to each work. However, despite the photos tactile quality there is still a falseness of the Polaroid machine, originally built for the quickness of modern’ society. The images created are dreamlike and do not accurately reflect the scenes they depict. The work references consumption and emotion specifically how feelings of nostalgia and comfort are presented to potential customers to pacify feelings of alienation, perpetuating a cycle of consumption. Companies aestheticize images to recollect at-homeness that only intensifies our estrangement. The works are intimate yet alienating, contradiction and uncertainty meant to represent anxiety felt by me and others in the contemporary world. We are looking back for comfort grasping at objects to fill a void of confusion within a perfect white frame.