Portfolio of Works
40
This series titled "40" is a personal documentation of coming face to face with aging and specifically the realization that youth and physical beauty don't last. This ongoing series is set within the personal spaces of my home beginning in the fall of 2012. My goal is to highlight the experience of this transition from middle age to "maturity".
Many people dread turning 40 but I embraced it. I was ready and waiting to accept the 40 torches because in my mind that number has been like the mantelpiece of adulthood. Finally, I’d be one of the productive members of society…
…I didn’t realize it’s a double-edged sword.
Archetype of Beauty No. 8, October 2013, Kodak Portra 400 Film © Pilar Arthur-Snead, All Rights Reserved
Archetype of Beauty No.15, August 2013, Kodak Portra 400 Film © Pilar Arthur-Snead, All Rights Reserved
November 2013, Kodak Portra 400 Film © Pilar Arthur-Snead, All Rights Reserved
Archetype of Beauty No. 8, October 2013, Kodak Portra 400 Film © Pilar Arthur-Snead, All Rights Reserved
Seeing Me: Archetypes of Beauty
External notions of feminine beauty, those defined by society at large, are often at odds with our private and self-defined views of beauty. How do we, as women, embrace beauty for ourselves if society’s definitions of physical beauty are narrow and somewhat exclusionary? In our quest to find balance between what we are and, perhaps, what we wish to be, the question naturally arises: Should beauty really be defined purely and solely by our corporeal being? Is it possible for beauty to be more than just skin deep, to surpass boundaries of race, size, and even form?
This project is a subjective interpretation beauty. Through this series of images, I create an environment in which physical beauty becomes malleable and ethereal, at times even lacking in permanent substantial form. The raw material of my body is used to transmute the solidity of physical beauty. Physical beauty, with all its worldly attachments, is thus transformed as the camera molds and shapes my body through the interplay of light and shadow. What emerges as I pose before the camera again and again are universally understood symbols of beauty - Archetypes of Beauty.
And I finally see me. Seeing Me: Archetypes of Beauty consists of 20 images, printed on silk fabric.
For Rent
The “For Rent” series is a personal documentary project. The project explores the impact of the economic downturn on the urban landscape. In one way I am nostalgic for a time that appears to be quickly fading away – a time when anyone could potentially have his or her piece of the American Pie. The quaint corner store is replaced by strip malls and mega malls, discount and national chain stores, and finally by the institutional promise that bigger and more is tacitly better. Our landscape tells a different story, however, that of a fallen middle class in America.
The project includes images of unoccupied commercial spaces and properties from a distance as well as from vantage points unique to each location. The properties exist throughout my hometown of Albany, NY and the surrounding region.
SmAlbany: An All America City
SmAlbany is a photo book series about place and about the things that collectively create the depth of lived space in Albany. The series combines a storyboard or personal documentary approach with the formal nature of fine art photographic method. The combination sheds light on the artists’ personal vision and experinece of SmAlbany. (The book can be purchased from Blurb)
A Sacred Grove
"A Sacred Grove” is collection of images inspired by the sacred mystery of trees. It is my hope that the viewer will leave behind their banal view on the nature of trees; perhaps, reconsider his or her interaction with them all together. In the grand scheme, I wish for the viewer to gain a sense of their own interdependent connections to the land and sacred spaces vis-à-vis trees.
