The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own. I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before. In this thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find. Please DO NOT send me your work. I do not take submissions.
Today’s featured artist: Bil Zelman
“And Here We Are- Stories From the Sixth Extinction” examines the current condition of our rapidly changing landscape, the punishing impacts of invasive species, the accelerated rate of extinctions and the fragile places where man and nature collide.
I present this work as evidence. Light and sound pollution, fences, roadways, water diversions, terraforming, agriculture, temperature rise, deforestation, globalization vectors in the movement of goods, newly introduced resource competition by invasive species, and innumerable other recent changes have made much of our planet unrecognizable to the existing instincts and genetic memory of countless species.
Shooting at nighttime visually isolates my subjects from their environment and allows me to illustrate the distress on an individual life sans all of the sunsets and mood lighting we often associate with nature photography. The darkness that surrounds my subjects is also analogous to the lack of familiarity and inability for organisms to recognize and adapt to the new world around them.
To see more of this project, click here.
APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s. After establishing the art buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999. She has a new Twitter feed with helpful marketing information because she believes that marketing should be driven by brand and not by specialty. Follow her at @SuzanneSease. Instagram
Success is more than a matter of your talent. It’s also a matter of doing a better job presenting it. And that is what I do with decades of agency and in-house experience.
