Proposal: Matt Holler

I've always been fascinated with the things that I've seen abroad. The past four summers I have spent touring various places in Europe. One of the things that really intrigued me about urban life there is the communities ability to combine old and new so successfully! I believe that in order to hold on to our culture and to instill romance in future generations, it is important to have close ties within the past, present and future.

Much of my interest lately has been examining places in and around Sarasota which could mimic this European idea. For example, for my architecture assignment I photographed a subdivision entrance which resembled a vineyard settled in the rolling hills of Chianti. I photographed a small local cafe housed within a structure resembling an old French alley. However, I tried to incorporate things such as modern buildings, roads, cars and people to show a sense of change and progression.

Obviously, these are not the ruins of an 18th century Medici palace, but they could resemble such, and I find that an intriguing topic for photographing. What I would like to do with this project is to take a model (or several) and place them in locations I've scouted which could very easily be an alleyway in Paris. I will be choosing models with close European ancestry and dressing them in contemporary fashions and photographing them in these spaces. Through this, I want to be able to show that like fashion, people and places can successfully change and reinvent themselves.

With these view cameras I've really been enjoying the tilt-shift qualities they enable. I think I would like to shoot these with black and white film utilizing tilts and shifts to give interesting depth of field perspectives.