Drawing inspiration from Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, this project seeks to incorporate the oxymetaphor, digital photography and photo manipulation into considerations of Heaven, Hell and Purgatory.
By considering the potential of an earthly site of transition (the cemetery) in relation to Dante's divine spaces, these images consider certain contradictions existing between the cemetery as a manifestation of waiting, permanence, and decay, and its associations with temporality and transition. The cemetery is therefore an oxymoron. It suggests both a beginning and an end; growth and decay; a place of closure and a pace of transition.
Although Heaven, Hell and Purgatory have distinct characteristics in these images, there are commonalities between their layered treatments and iconography that unify them as a whole.
