Jenni Summers
Photography is about creating emotion within an image, and to me, the best photographs are those that capture and elicit a feeling. My goal was to create deliberate images that illustrate a feeling through the depiction of couples together in lonely wide open landscapes.
I chose this subject partly for my love of taking couples pictures, and partly for my interest in placing something that should be joyful and lovely with the opposite: loneliness and emptiness. The couples featured are always physically together in each picture, but there is a distance between them still, represented by the vastness of the landscapes they are found in. These wide open settings convey what goes unsaid and reveals what is felt on the inside, regardless of how close they appear on the outside.
My inspiration for this project is my desire to change the kind of couples pictures that I would typically take. Normally, couples photographs are cheerful and full of love and light, but slightly altering the way I photograph re-energizes and re-inspires me to look at a scene or a couple differently. It can be easy to go through the motions and get stuck creatively, but it may not be that difficult to reignite a spark and find a whole new perspective. As a photographer, I aim to always look for different perspectives and push myself to see things in a unique way, even if it is as simple as shifting the mood.
