I. Stay Soft 2016
"Stay soft. For the sake of anyone who cannot feel or swim inside of their own skin, caught between built barriers now solid as stone. Show them the depth of seas. The language of water."
– Victoria Erickson
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STAY SOFT 2016
SWIM 2016
SHOW THEM 2016
BETWEEN 2016
THEIR OWN SKIN 2016
CAUGHT 2016
LANGUAGE 2016
Stay Soft Statement
"There's a softness to them—your pictures," a close friend remarks as I share my images with her. In that moment, something within me rises to the surface: defiance, almost disgust, and the realisation of my aversion to a word I unknowingly associated with weakness. I don't want my images to be soft; I don't want to be seen as soft. More emotion wells up inside, and upon rising, it seems to surrender to the air. I understand now—being soft doesn't mean you are not strong. There is strength in softness. It's a simple truth, yet its profundity puts cracks in old, hardened walls; walls I constructed when I was a young girl, believing they were an achievement of strength.
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Punturiero puts the viewer in a dream-like world of compositions where abstract figures are juxtaposed against organic structures layered on top of one another in a way that compresses space and removes all context and sense of scale. The compositions become like another world where a human body merges with the environment and transform to become new organic structures.
LENSCULTURE ART PHOTOGRAPHY AWARDS 2018 JUROR
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Rachel Punturiero
rachelpunturiero@gmail.com
© 2023
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