Brittany Newlove: What Should I Say?

January 17–February 24, 2024
Student Gallery

What Should I Say? depicts the experience of seclusion and the perception of self within the domestic sphere. Living alone throughout the period of pandemic lockdown, photographing my own presence became a way to process my experience of isolation, the camera providing an objective distancing tool. During this time, I became a kind of voyeur of my own confinement. Photography became both a practice of self-care and creative exploration.

Through photographic sequencing and by referencing the act of photography, I utilize the medium to understand my constantly shifting experience. With images of shadows, objects, and other somatic impressions, I imitate and re-enact traces of my presence.

There is a shift in this series from previous projects which sought to deconstruct relationships with others. What Should I Say? presents an existential journey in which I dissect the relationship with myself and the space I inhabit and come to terms with my personal journey from March 2020 to the present day. I work towards developing a curiosity of autonomy within. As the period of solitude stretched on, and I learned to embrace it, my images reveal the sense of timelessness which set in. Acutely observing the quality of the changing light in the space around me, grounded me in the consciousness of my body in the passing of time.

- Brittany Newlove