At its core In A New Light is a celebration of simplicity, imagined realities, and the complex beauty that exists around us every day waiting to be seen. I started the project last year during my freshman year by photographing new friends in the foundation studios and around New York. At that time I had just finished a melodrama of a high school senior thesis show and was looking for a change. I began to experiment with colors and intense light, something I had always been drawn to throughout my teenage years but never had the courage to explore. It seemed foreign to me and it still does in some ways.
In their stillness and quiet natures, the selected pieces reflect the way I wish the world and the people I encounter to be seen. Forever frozen in their kindness and vibrancy. Through this, I’m able to create images that emphasize the both physical, conceptual, and emotional beauty of my friends.
The exploration of alternate realities where color and light is pushed to the max is, while beautiful and illuminating, something I think requires a careful balance. I don’t want to feel like I’m always searching for something outside of my true reality to then wake up one day and have missed my real one. The truth is that there is beauty in the mundane. I don’t see a harm however in imagining a world in which all of those emotions that come with color and light are amplified, and in which we begin to allow ourselves to create a new world, even just in a digital landscape such as photography. In A New Light creates a space in which we do not have to be afraid of leaving the familiar, and can begin searching for something new.