KALINA HERTAFELD

About Slippery Semblance

With this series of photos, I aim to obscure the viewer's ability to pick out and name distinct objects, and organize the information that they are taking in in the ways that they are used to. The objects in these photos are shown close-up, and are framed in a way that draws attention to the forms that make them up, but not the whole. I also arranged objects together that may not usually be in the same space, and avoided including information that would imply  setting or context. Our brains are very good at taking in a lot of information and distilling it into more manageable pieces. This allows us to organize and define what we see and gives us a sense of understanding and control, but if we cannot see the edges of the objects, and are given no cues that allow us to infer the name, use, or location of an object, we are left at a loss. 

Although our brain’s organizational tendencies are extremely helpful in a lot of areas of human life, there comes a point where our labels and systems of organization go too far and cause us to make unnecessary and limiting distinctions. The binaries that we have constructed our lives around are unable to describe the nuances and idiosyncrasies that are actually present in the world, and cause us to cling to reductive ideas about our own identity and the identities of others. This is why I have made it my goal to inhibit these mental habits of labeling and organizing and cause the viewer to experience some of the materials that inhabit the world we live in in a new and objective way. My overall goal is to facilitate a moment in which the viewer is forced to surrender to ambiguity; to a state of not being able to confidently know, name, or form associations with what they are looking at.