Updated Artist Statement for Up Coming ShowAfter coming from a dying farming community I stepped into the realm of photography in protest against the advancing world of new necessities such as cell phones, laptops, and six-digit salaries. I come from a set of people who have fed, clothed, and have been raised by our forefathers with long standing traditions have now become trampled upon in this fast paced world.
In the Western Series, I document the slow life: Where fishing isn’t a fun activity but can mean a hot meal at the end of the day, where a saddle and hat aren’t fashion statements like seen at the fairs but how few people get around without using gasoline, where humans and nature can still co-exist without being cut in half by concrete.
All around my old home in central Ohio the elders of the farming community have been passing away and leaving their farm land to their children as their traditions, honor, and biblical respect has taught them. Even though the elders know the next generation is going to parcel hundreds of acres single digit acre lots, collecting thousands if not millions of dollars, the elders, our elders pass down the land in hopes that their efforts to create and fertilize new lives may not be forgotten.
The stereotypical definition of a farmer is one who wears jeans, flannel shirts, drives a tractor, listens to country music, eats bacon every morning, and has very little money to spend. Farmers are today’s “Untouchables.” The people who are ignored, belittled with jokes, and even thought to be low enough to be seen as slaves, but if I may speak for the men and women in the fields today, they could change their way of life if they wanted to.
Instead they do the very things that have created the food on our tables, the cotton on our backs, the tobacco in our cigarettes and no matter how low the pay are still happy to do it. The ground, livestock, trees, crops, and sky are the riches of the world to the farmers at the end of a long day. They respect the ever changing world in hopes that they are recognized and respected back for their continuation of planting our heritage in both the soil and mind. Let us not forget where we have tread, but where our forefathers have tread to start us walking where we are in the first place.
I may be a college student, “modernizing” from the farming community, however I hope to let my elders know that I have not forgotten where I’ve come from, but strive to spread their words of respect and remind others of their lineage.
Photography is my way of documenting the world that has been ignored if not forgotten. Through the viewfinder I capture these fragments of forgotten life on farms, street alleys, barren landscapes, and sometimes even my own back yard.
Artistic
thank you!!
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I hope to see you again in my gallery!
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Valentina Blasi Photography
I'm sorry, but I cannot reply and thank you all because of the filter which doesn't allow me to post too many messages in a row!
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Tanshin
...love all, trust few, do wrong to none...
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