Writing for Exhibitions:
Loreal Prystaj, Photography
As the work for the series [Inner Child] progressed, I found my subjects reaching toward light. Often, they interacted with it, were juxtaposed against it, sought it out, or were the very source of it. This turn from darkness felt open, unmanipulated. It allowed access to the inner state, there where the child appears.
Placement of light in this series is carefully defining, as is the manipulation of color. I concentrated these elements as the mind does in memory—in unexpected flashes, blinding detail, obscured corners, semi-revealed narrative. Truth then came in spurts: radiating out of a cabinet, falling like rain in a bathtub, emanating from behind a lit screen, or gleaming warmly from the womb.
Through the Being series, I set for myself the nearly impossible task of understanding—and then celebrating—the human body as gestalt. A masterpiece of living, breathing, swelling, imagining, the body is an achievement of no human making. I felt the need to place it, to situate its wonderment in context. For this reason, the space around it was paramount, its lighting a powerful avenue to clarity. Common settings, utilitarian spaces, and human-made, everyday items are lit to both offset and envelop what is uncommon, fancy, and singular in the human form.
I strove to create subtle realization for the viewer, a space in which the body is revealed as both a thing of nature and by nature as well—the centerpiece as source.
For more on this artist's work, please visit www.lorealprystaj.com
