Making an Image
PJ Lynch; Dublin, Ireland - Illustrator
My main idea for the “make an image” project pertains to Oscar Wilde’s short stories. I’ve always been a fan of Wilde since reading The Picture of Dorian Grey in high school and after reading his short stories, the symbolism represented in these tales and the vividness in which they’re portrayed makes for a great still life interpretation through photography. The most striking story is The Nightingale and the Rose; a story about a nightingale who gives her own life to create a red rose for a boy who is in love. So beautifully written, the boy’s love will only dance with him if he gives her a red rose. In the boy’s garden there are only white and yellow roses and the tree with red roses can not produce them anymore. The red rose tree tells the nightingale that the only way for it to make a red rose is for her to pierce her heart on one of its thorns and sacrifice herself for love. This story is very beautiful and cynical at the same time, it expresses how some people are so wrapped up in romance and how others are so superficial and don’t care about what sort of effort or sacrifices go into loving someone else. I think that concentrating on this story, several striking and meaningful images can be produced.
http://www.shortstoryarchive.com/w/nightingale_and_the_rose.html <–full story can be read here.
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
My second idea is based on a short story The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. This story has always been one of my favorites to read since high school. Psychologically, this story delves into the delusional thoughts of a woman who is experiencing what seems to be depression in relation to feeling trapped with her duties and social commitments and roles associated with being a woman in the late 1800s. She eventually seems to lose her mind when she has a manic episode and locks herself in the mysterious, yellow wallpapered room and tears it to shreds, “Then I peeled off all the paper I could reach standing on the floor. It sticks horribly and the pattern just enjoys it! All those strangled heads and bulbous eyes and waddling fungus growths just shriek with derision!”
http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/history/lavender/wallpaper.html
