In my practice I use experimentation, self reflection, and observation, combined with traditional techniques in darkroom photography as well as in ceramics. Both darkroom photography and ceramics are slow, labor intensive processes that require planning, attention to detail, and sensitivity to the medium. My work addresses change in the body over time. Specifically themes of comparison in natural, artificial, and instantaneous changes to the body surface. I also show in my work the psychological issues that accompany these changes and the effects they have on the body, both short and long term. By documenting and dramatizing the surfaces of people's bodies in a way that makes them slightly abstracted and less figurative, almost topographic, I bring consciousness to the fact that these processes are universal, interesting, and beautiful. 

     Using two drastically different mediums, I show the different effects that change to the body has on the individual and the viewer. Working in black and white, provides the highest degree of clarity and contrast for the ideas being explored. In using darkroom photography, I capture the delicate details, enlarged to a size that makes them slightly abstracted to show what a viewer might see when they look at another person. In the black and white photography process, the photos are printed how I saw the body when I shot them, without making drastic changes. In ceramics, I explore the same ideas but lean more towards the cognitive processes that are present in many of our minds, and how we physically and emotionally experience the body. The distortions caused by focusing on ones appearance, then overanalyzing something minor to the point that it is seen as a flaw. The work in ceramics is more dramatic, exaggerated, and over worked, representing the inner turmoil that many feel. The mediums play off each other by using the same subject matter and those images and ideas being understated, and then in contrast, drastically manipulated and distorted to create a dialogue about what is seen and what is experienced. 

-Hailey Kuhn