Now more than ever we live in a world where human actions shape our reality. Everything has been transformed, or fabricated by human hands. Human influence has extended beyond the tangible and has begun to shape and manipulate our perception of our world. It has become difficult then to distinguish between reality and our perception of reality.
This set of images is an exploration of humanity's susceptibility to the “false” due to the societal trend of “blurring the line” between truth and fabrication, and to our tendency to take everything at face value and accept our perceptions.
Still life images of flowers are familiar to viewers. As such, these images tend to generate familiar responses and bring with them a multitude of expectations. These flowers photographed out of their natural context, seek to approximate reality by selecting and accentuating certain elements, color, texture and even movement. They seeks to create a moment of uncertainty that gently challenges the viewer to move beyond their expectations and see the reality of what is presented in the image.
In a recent article in
Quanta Magazine, David D. Hoffman a professor of cognitive science at the University of California, Irvine, suggests that the world presented to us by our perceptions is nothing like reality. We have evolved to perceive things in a manner that is beneficial to our survival regardless of the truth.
This poses the question, is our manipulated perception truly beneficial to our survival. Should we accept our perceptions or look deeper?
