In order to acquire my Masters Degree in Digital Storytelling, I had to complete a thesis or creative project. I chose to do a photo-journal of my time at Burning Man 2018.
Within this project, my primary goal for the paper was to break down the photographs I took at Burning Man in 2018 and explain the editing process in my photos to prove there must be a line when manipulating a photograph. Within my pool of 1,200 photographs I took over the span of a week, I selected specific ones that I felt highlighted my experience there and see through my editing process whether I crossed an ethical line.
Through this process, I attempted to explore where the ethical boundary lies between art, documentation, and reality. With technology growing at an alarming rate, it is easy to alter a photograph or video from its original form. Plato’s Theory of Forms goes over how the essence of something is non-physical and how we will never be able to see the essence of anything in the real world. We only have what we can see in this physical world.
There is an essence to a photograph and there is physical form of a photograph. Technology nowadays can alter and change photos in the snap of a finger, which then alters its original form in the physical world. These 50 photographs I selected to display on this page are images I felt were pivotal to showcasing my experience at Burning Man.
Within certain images, there is a background information on how the image was captured along with the necessary revisions that I felt did not cross any ethical boundaries. The people, art, and moments throughout this experience shape what makes this event so unique every year.
