Photography BFA Thesis

The Time Has Come to Talk of Many Things

Digital C-Print

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll tells the story of Alice, a young girl who follows a white rabbit down a hole into a fantasy world populated by peculiar and unusual creatures that talk nonsense. Since I was a young girl, the unusual and fanciful characters portrayed by Carroll and the world they live in have fascinated me. There is an intriguing aspect to the jokes, wordplay, and hidden meanings within the story. I was inspired by this story for my thesis.

I focused on both the written tale and the movie by Walt Disney, to give a full story line. From there, I set up scenes that reflect those parts within the story, the ones that have always been important to me throughout my life. Some of the more prominent elements include specific events such as the mad tea party, the croquet match with the Queen of Hearts, Tweedledee and Tweedledum, Alice visiting the White Rabbit’s house, and several others.

There is an underlying theme in the story dealing with maturity, which I find intriguing, and thus have decided to focus on it. Alice is an adolescent girl who seems to be in a frightening world ruled by chaos and nonsense, where she faces multiple situations involving several curious animals. The theme of Alice growing and shrinking into different sizes could reflect the ups and downs of adolescence and the physical growth that children and teens go through as they transition from childhood to adulthood. Throughout the book, Alice used rational thought and good advice to justify some of the things she was doing. Alice did not like the animals in Wonderland who treated her as a child, but sometimes the responsibilities she had to take on appeared daunting.

Many photographers have influenced my work, one in particular being Annie Leibovitz. I am intrigued by Annie Leibovitz’s portrayal of Alice in Wonderland for a Vogue Magazine editorial. Her set for these works is beautifully done, using available light along with artificial light to illuminate her arrangements. The attention to detail is impressive and when she uses props, it is evident that they are placed precisely, and her sets are carefully thought out. To represent my interpretation of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, I manifested the images in Photoshop. Altering Alice’s surroundings and the world that she was in, and with manipulation, I was able to create the illusion of an illustration. I want my images to evoke a whimsical, fanciful feeling, as that is my impression of the story, but also as a shift from adolescent to adulthood.