Whether I am working on an academic paper or a visual art piece, my brainstorming always includes some type of sketch or visualization tool. For this project, I began by creating quick pen sketches in a small notebook as the ideas came to me. On my commute to school, in a waiting room, during a break in between classes…I would pull out my notebook and scratch out any and all ideas that came to me. Some of these rough sketches served as a guide for the final photographs (though some are yet to be made and will be included on a separate portfolio site). In order to flesh out these ideas, I decided to create a few watercolors to flesh out the ideas and as a visual aid to show my classmates the direction this project was taking. In the process of making these it became clearer to me, and my thesis class, that the aesthetic nature of my project was leaning less towards gore and more towards emotions and impressions.
In my mind, this series could only come together as a singular set by following a narrative, and I had many to choose from. My thesis paper included for similar stories that could be split into pairs: “Berenice” and Psycho, “Ligeia” and Vertigo. Although many presentations and discussions about my thesis project in general have revolved around the former pair. Vertigo is a very beautiful film, skillfully shot, and full of vibrant colors that I wished to recreate in my own photographic style. However, the majority of the conceptual sketches coming to me were set heavily in world of “Berenice,” a Poe story that I believe deserves more study than it has received in the past. Below are a couple of my sketches. Some may look familiar to the images on the main page (especially this one right below). The rest will be stored away and reserved for a future revisitation of this project. Expect more Hitchcock!
