Stephanie Price

Stephanie Price is a senior here at Tyler’s Photography department. While taking a color class last year she began a portfolio of work, which has had a constant impact on her creative thinking and has further developed into her current body of work. Her current portfolio stemmed from controlled room studies, where the photographs embodied a sense of missing action and emptiness. Her main attraction to this style of photography was her control over the composition and the feeling that these spaces would not exist outside of the picture. Her work up to date still holds true to this attraction, but has also made an additional element, the human. After viewing her 4x5 work prints, it was evident that her relationship to her work is a highly psychological one where she must possess the greatest sense of control in terms of what the photograph results in and what the photograph holds in it’s frame. Everything is planned and directed precisely down to the gaze and pose of her subjects. She is experimenting with inventing spaces, whether it belongs to her subject or not, and placing her subjects in them how she sees fits; it’s a falsification while having something that is real. I asked whether or not this should matter to the viewer, us knowing that these spaces do or do not belong to the subjects, and the answer she gave was the answer that summed up the totality of the work: 

“It’s an internal battle of control that doesn’t need to be communicated to the viewer… I want to control my subject’s personality, I want them to look like ‘this’ and embody something to my liking and idea in these spaces which I also have full control over… essentially they are toys that I’m playing with in a weird way…”

Her photographs are portraits about manipulation – picking models and finding spaces they fit in, matching a space to a personality or feeling that is only transcribed through her own idea and fascination.                   

Another important note to make is her study abroad experience in Rome, which has affected her work by further ensuring her mentality towards it. While studying in Rome she became aware of how much she composed and staged her photographs. She tried to think in a “different” way where she let go of this sense of control, she wanted to learn how to be “off the cuff” – and this is where she picked up a half-frame camera. She loved working with the half-frame camera, and still does to this day. She explained her love for it was the fact that the camera dictated the next frame and how these diptychs had equal power over each other. But also while working with this camera and new way of shooting she further realized how much she loves the control she puts into her composition and stated at the end of our interview: 

“Everyone has this idea that photography is ‘real’, and I realized that by that belief I could fool everyone... and I love it!”

Written by Brittany Demilio