My Diptych

A diptych is the juxtaposition of two pictures that may somehow relate to each other. The idea for our diptych was supposed to be based off of our poems written in English. We were supposed to chose two lines from our poems and create metaphors out of them. Then, we had to take pictures of those metaphors. We then edited the two photos in Adobe Photoshop. Below is my artist statement.

My diptych shows how change can be deceiving and unwanted. For the picture on the left I chose to represent cookie cutter shapes and sizes through a rubber stamp. I wanted my picture about conforming to be a ‘cookie cutter’ to be able to represent all types of people. This is why I chose a stamp to represent it. All stamps are made perfectly exactly like one another. My picture shows a different flower stamped on the paper than what the rubber stamp is actually showing. This represents how you don’t need to conform to the perfection or the simplicity of the stamp, you can and should be yourself. On the right side of my diptych is a picture of a stop sign. The stop sign is a metaphor for shutting your lips. When you shut your lips you stop talking, which is why I chose to represent this with a stop sign. When you are driving and you see a stop sign you immediately begin to slow down to a stop, just like when you shut your lips you stop talking. This side of my diptych shows how when you are being told to stop, you should just suck it up and shut your lips.

For the left side of my diptych I used a small aperture because I was inside a brightly lit room. I chose to take the photo of the stamp at a side angle because I thought it looked more interesting to the viewers eye. The side view also helps to elicit the impression that the rubber stamp is different than stamp that was stamped onto the paper. I used bright lighting so that you could see everything in the picture clearly. For the right side of my diptych I used a big aperture because I was outside in the dark. I took the photo of the stop sign outside in my neighborhood. I took the picture of the stop sign head on. I positioned the camera head on because I felt like it made the stop sign the main focus of the photo.