Redefining Intimacy: Challenging the Margins, Boundaries, and Dimensions of Physicality and Emotionality within Interpersonal Relationships
Addie Johnson
Virginia Commonwealth University
Keywords: photography, collage, texture, intimacy, body geography
Abstract
Although the idea of platonic and romantic intimacy may have stereotypical implications within society, there are widely varied definitions of the concept. This photographic and digital collage series meditates on the conventional portrait by examining the visual deconstruction of photographed bodies and proposing a multifaceted interpretation of the construct of intimacy. Composed of manipulated photographs through digital collage, scanned glass, and physically created analog and digital layered textures, the work explores the space and politics of physical figures within an image. It investigates and complicates the tension between physical anonymity and emotional sensuality and then reconciles the digital space through purposeful distortion. The process of collage explores the idea of spatial proprioception as a vehicle of understanding intimacy from multiple layers and ambiguous forms, as well as utilizes and disfigures the body as a geographic surface.
