TITLE: The Fragmented Portrait

I often spend my time observing the relationship between myself and others around me. There is a physical and mental distance we share which affects the way we perceive others and how we interact. This distance plays a key role in defining our relationship to what is around us and how we navigate. The thing about distance however, is that it skews our perspective when it goes unchallenged.

It was when I started to travel as a teenager, that I was introduced to an aerial view of the world. It wasn't often that I could see what only the gods could see. Being from Kansas, the flat land often seemed endless as it expands off into the vast horizon. Flying above the ground, rows of squares, circles, and lines made up of farmland, crops and many wandering roads shaped this land. To see the sense of order and structure from a larger scale unveiled a new point of view to something I’d known so well. This birds-eye perspective has always inspired me. There is an inherent beauty in emptiness, and a curiosity in perspective.

Inspired by aerial landscapes, The Fragmented Portrait, approaches portraiture from an overarching perspective that distorts the distance between the work and its audience. The perspective, juxtaposed with the scale of the body, transforms each to become larger than life images that skew the viewer's perception. Exploring themes of faceless portraiture and aerial perspectives, each image invites the viewer to place themselves in these surreal moments that live in this void. A person's face represents a version of who they think they should be in front of the camera. The fragmented portrait seeks to take that control away.

AUTHOR: Jesse Skupa (United States)

Jesse Skupa is a New York based photographer and artist that transplanted from the midwest in 2016. Growing up in small, suburban town Kansas, photography was an escape from the masculine stereotypes placed on men and boys. It served as a gateway into the worlds around him that explored fragments of life not always seen. Developing themes around faceless portraiture and ephemeral narratives, the work enters notional spaces that invites the viewer to place themselves in these surreal moments.