Jennifer Leigh Mayer: Graduating Exhibition

Conventionally, photographic portraiture offers an idealised representation of someone. Racing Hearts discusses the split between being and appearance through simulated or enacted emotions. The subjects in Racing Hearts appear exposed and troubled offering photographic representations of emotion, which work to destabilise the viewing experience. These images glamorise anguish and distress - emotions that are generally viewed as private and certainly not photographed.

Ambiguity surrounding the nature of these images blurs the lines of distinction between what is genuine and what is feigned, suspending the viewers judgement. It's unclear whether these are intensely emotional moments or bad acting jobs - or an intensely emotional moment via the mimicry of a bad acting job. The subjects perform delicate balancing acts between self possession and vulnerability. This allows parallels to be drawn between quiet introspection and the enactment of emotion; the filmic and the theatrical the archetypal and the unique as well as public and private moments. However, this juxtaposition is meant as more than a discourse on authenticity. Racing Hearts also questions the extent to which western consumer culture has influenced and defined society's notions of romance as well as it's associated emotions. Romantic love, as presented by the media, is portrayed in a glamorous and idealised fashion. This creates a kind of desire, which becomes sought after, permeating our psyche. Its as though men and women fight, grieve, live and die to experience such extreme emotions. These images aim to bring perspective to and assist in an examination of our shared social and psychological conditions and the way they are viewed and understood through the photographic medium.

The reductive formal treatment of these images plays on the trappings of portraiture and immerses the subjects in a type of artifice. This creates an underlying sense of dislocation and enigma, engulfing each figure in obscurity and toying with the viewers half-awakened need for knowledge. More of an enunciation than a conclusion, each image contains layers of suggestion rather than just recorded appearance, offering the possibility of finishing the story or completing the content. Demonstrating a conflicting external and internal sense of self, this series aims to communicate the uneasy inconsistencies of life. Racing Hearts entertains the possibility of an underlying truth that is never revealed.