Lecture reflection - Collen Woolpert

I didn’t get a chance to go to Colleen Woolpert’s talk, so it was a big miss to know more about her inspiration, motivation and her ideas/emotions involved in her project.

Nevertheless, I went on her website and her works are truly fascinating to me. I define myself having huge interest on photography specifically and digital art generally, I find her works with the TwinScope Viewer really creative.

Here’s an example of how the TwinScope Viewer works:

Red Twin Blue Twin (Photo Test 1), 2017

Archival Inkjet Print

9 x 19 inches framed

The two portraits on the sides present Woolpert and her twin sister, and the middle portrait represent how the TwinScope Viewer can “merge” two portraits into one.

How the TwinScope Viewer interacts with the portraits (or any pair of photographs in her project) reminds me of how “overlay” mode in Adobe Photoshop works, and also double-exposure technique on film camera. Furthermore, her works also inspire me to manually manipulate the photographs (although it’s the TwinScope Viewer that did the most manipulation, but I still consider it “manually”).

In her statement for “Red Twin Blue Twin” project, she said:

Exhaustively recasting these portraits recalls the generative nature of photography itself just as it creates an image pile-up that threatens to obscure the two subjects under the microscope. Nonetheless, while I may never plumb the depths of what it means to be half of a double image, the project pushed me to test my hypothesis once and for all: a recent DNA test proved we're identical twins, redefining my sense of self and creating new and intriguing questions.

I totally agree with the idea that, the more I manipulate my photographs, the less they seem to be “real”. However, “realness”, at least to me, is not the ultimate goal of arts; instead, representing the core idea that I devote in what I make is what I should focus on, as Woolpert proved herself and her twin are identical twins.