Amy Davis

Artist and Educator 

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E: amydavisphotography@gmail.com

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Artist Statement

I am interested in using photography, video, and media to explore how identity is expressed and curated for social media. TheA camera is a tool by which we can invent an image of ourselves, and social media is howthe method by which we can project these "'inventions"' to many a significant number of strangers. We have been sharing self-constructed narratives about our assumed characters since the advent of photography.

My past installations and video projects have focused on how we curate identity for social media. Social media enforces people's desire to look at others and be looked at. Images are no longer housed in private photo albums but online for a greater viewing audience. We look at pictures of others to better learn how to take photographs of ourselves.

As curator Sandra S. Phillip wrote in the catalogue to the show Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance, and the Camera since 1870, "Human hunger for seeing the forbidden has not changed. The technologies to facilitate it havehas.".

My project, "Inference," is a voyeuristic investigation of the information conveyed about personal identity based on the photographic images people take and share with others. This multi-component interactive projected installation explores our fascination with peeking into the lives of others and how we assess make assessments about a stranger's character, disposition, and interpersonal relationships through collections of images taken of them or by them. Designed as an interactive wall projection controlled by a cell phone, cCellular cCharacterizations are 6x6 foot photo mosaic portraits comprising composed of the entirety of a subject's images and text messages stored on their phone. Every subject surrendered their phone to me, allowing me to extract a complete, uncurated inventory of every photo they took or received or text message they saved on their phone. Each of these images becomes an element in a mosaic portrait of the person, assigning photos based on the different tonalities of a person's visage. Using a cellphone to mirror its display for the projection, the viewer can zoom into the mosaic to view each image or read each text message. These projected portraits are a modern-day equivalent of peeking through a person's diary. These mosaic portraits resembled each person's the likenesses of each person with the color palette and content from everything stored on their phone.

My current photo and video project, "Assimilation," stemming from my relationship with my husband, focuses on the dual nature of identity, particularly for immigrants who moved to America. This project looks into the personal struggles of immigrants as they shift their cultural identities to adopt the American lifestyle and the guilt experienced as they begin to create new traditions from their homelands. With a focus on immigrants who marry outside their culture, I seek to use photography and video as a tools to explore these shifting cultural identities and traditions.