Holly Mccoach /Staff Writer
What is art? Is it Monet? Or is it perhaps your four year old sister’s finger painting masterpiece? How about that drawing sketched up by that street urchin you saw last week in the Gables?
Whichever answer you chose is the correct answer, for art is highly individualized, according to Lindsay Dye, an FIU alumna.
Camera clutched in hand, Tampa native Dye is always prepared to capture her everyday life.
Photography was not always her go-to hobby, however. Painting, drawing and sculpting dominated her early life.
It was only in high school when she discovered her own vision and definition of art through photography.
“Since my teen years I relentlessly searched for a medium that was tailored to how I see out of my own eyes. During my senior year of high school, the first photography class was offered in a makeshift darkroom fashioned out of a janitor’s closet,” said Dye.
Dye has consistently been inspired by those around her, often focusing on her friends as subjects.
“I began processing negatives and making black and white prints of my female friends lying in bed, dressing up in their mother’s clothes, smoking and drinking,” said Dye.
Dye emphasizes that college was where she truly learned how to create informative photographs that also told stories.
By studying the rich culture and methods of the masters, she began to realize what was beautiful to her in everyday life, and used that subject matter to create her own photographs.
“The simplest moments became undeniably striking; my niece in the bathtub, my grandmother drinking a beer, my boyfriend in bed naked taking off his socks,” said Dye.
From there, Dye’s highly individualized journey took flight. Determined to capture the raw aspects of everyday life, Dye resorted to using plastic, disposable cameras.
With the use of these cameras, her subjects have little time to react, allowing the outcome of the photograph to be pure and realistic.
The first subject she photographed with these cameras were her female friends, capturing nights spent in Miami.
This is how Dye developed her undergraduate thesis project, called “Grainy, Sh-tty, Acidy.”
These photographs of her friends varied from nightclubs and strip clubs, to bathrooms and restaurants.
“As I chronicled my friends, I focused on their disengagement, standing away from the herd, unhappy yet powerful. I was documenting my own niche, my own subculture and began analyzing and archiving,” said Dye.
Dye’s photographs from her thesis project have been featured in the College of Architecture + the Arts’s Miami Beach Urban Studios at 420 Lincoln Road.
The project featured the photos of ten alumni titled Hang Ten.
Her work is also a part of the Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum’s permanent collection.
Although she has received a lot of positive feedback, she believes it is only natural for her viewers’ feedback to be both positive and negative, seeing how her photos are only an extension of life.
“My friends were a diverse group…that were just plain sad. They emitted an air of unfilled existence in a ‘beautiful suffering’ kind of way,” said Dye.
After graduating from the University in 2011 with a BFA in photography and a minor in Art history, Dye moved to New York City, to work as an intern with Aperture Foundation, a non-profit that connects the photography community with audiences.
She has published articles for their “Exposures” blog.
In the future, Dye hopes to work for a publisher or to be an Art Director and has applied to multiple graduate schools nationally.
Aside from her thesis project, Dye has published many of her photos on her personal website and elsewhere.
“Formaldehyde” is her first photography book, published by Gusto. She also has a lifelong project titled “Emma,” where Dye shoots photos of her niece.
Dye’s vision and life collide in a way that has continually inspired her work, ensuring that her inspiration will be endless.
About Post Author
