Weekend Portfolio: Dawson Batchelder

Regard It Like A Dove

Made out of the anxieties and struggles of the pandemic and the reemergence from it, a time when we were seeing the world again in a whole new way, Regard It Like A Dove focuses on a theme of interjection, both in narratives and in art. The base images are medium-format film photographs made on my grandfather’s Rolleiflex, however many of them are “interrupted” with digital sculptures layered on top. These digital sculptures take the form of any number of objects, like blimps and pipes, ropes and eggs, and were inspired by the unique emotional experiences that come with isolation and reemergence, attempting to externalize the collectively secluded experience of the pandemic. I made these elements in a 3D sculpting program and fitted them into the pictures to try to make them look as though they were actually there when I was taking the picture. In this way, the scene of the picture is interrupted by new figures, and calls into question the truth of what you’re looking at, interrupting the narrative of the photograph. 

Along with the images, there is a piece of writing which describes the emotional hardships of contending with memories and narratives in our heads, how tempting it can be to constantly relive times past, and judge the present, how we tend to string along the story of our life, even if every event isn’t completely as it was. The three mediums, photography, digital sculpture, and written word, come together to create dialogues about time, memory, and emotion, interpreting and reinterpreting, disrupting while simultaneously synthesizing narratives that never occurred.

To view more of Dawson Batchelder’s work, please visit dawsonbatchelder.com or @dawsonbatchelder on Instagram