USC’s advanced photography class, ARTS 461, held the opening reception for its “Parallax” exhibit Thursday in City Art Gallery, showing a mashup of various concepts and ideas by 20 students.
While some students focused on everyday objects like a computer keyboard — fourth-year graphic design student Jayson Bocook’s inspiration for his “Techno-Retro” — others chose to spotlight nontraditional art and the artists behind the works. Alicia Hickey, a third-year photography student, focused on graffiti and the artists behind the large-scale art in her segment entitled “Read This.”
Hickey said she was interested in graffiti growing up in Columbia and knew many of those involved with the subculture before she began the project.
“It was really difficult because we had to paint in the day, because it was dangerous for me at night,” Hickey said.
She said that the work shown wasn’t the entirety of her project.
“I’m going to continue this project. I’m not finished at all,” Hickey said.
Her images featured bright works of graffiti around the city and on boards the artists had set up in the woods. Some of the photographs featured the artists themselves — their faces obstructed from view, mainly by handkerchiefs.
Alexis Schwallier, a fourth-year photography student, also used color to distinguish her work. The project, entitled “Forgetting What It All Means,” was born from Schwallier’s love for road trips. The images quickly became more personal with time, and many of the images were double-exposed and shot as panoramic, all relatively small when compared with other images in the show.
“Because it was so personal, I wanted it to be small so it was more intimate,” Schwallier said. “When they are small like that the viewer really has to come and get close to view them.”
Fourth-year photography and art history student Jennifer McKay’s project was also of a personal nature. McKay used the negatives of old photos she took while living in an abusive relationship in New York and layered them with writing and new images.
The work, “Looking Back,” was meant to study acceptance and coming to terms with past events. All of the images were in black and white, as she wanted to keep the project consistent with the way the images were originally taken, and the writings layered overtop were from her journals.
Third-year photography student Sarah Kobos based her project, “Cabrillo and Other Poems,” on a book of poems by Philip Morse, one of Kobos’ ancestors. Featuring three different models in fluttering gowns with slightly rumpled hair, Kobos said the images all pulled inspiration from at least one poem, although they may have not been direct representations.
Originally, the project, which includes mostly portrait photography, was going to be inspired by Charles Bukowski, but that all changed when Kobos’ grandmother gave her a book of poetry.
“I love portrait photography, so I wanted to do that, but I also wanted to add a bit more,” Kobos said.
The projects were all products of the entire semester, which included three different critiques. Images were all printed the week prior, and a majority of the actual exhibit came together the week of the opening. Some students had a problem with editing down for the show because of the amount of images required for the critiques.
“In the past there were less students, so they could do more pieces. But, there were so many artists this time,” Kobos said. “Editing was a big problem for some people because we had to have three images for each critique.”
“Parallax,” the innovative exhibit, will hang in City Art Gallery at 1224 Lincoln St. until April 22.
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