Elements: Water
By Jason Canavaggio
26 Oct 2007
Quite recently the first two volumes of Thrice's new album, The Alchemy Index, were released. The Alchemy Index is the idea of turning certain sounds that resemble one of the four elements into a collection of songs per element themed CD. The first two volumes are Fire and Water, while the third and fourth volumes (to be released later) are going to be Air and Earth. This is what gave me the idea for this collection of photographs.
While listening to the Water album I got the idea of doing a collection of pictures that centered on the four elements. Before embarking on the process of creating these pictures I had to figure out what direction I wanted to go. I began to think of how water should be represented.
I didn't want to use the stereo type of water being associated strictly with blue, as I have seen in numerous photographs. I thought of the drought in Georgia and recalled someone on the street saying that all the water in Georgia seems to be dying. This led me to think of different philosophies such as Plato and Spinoza, which then led me to think of water having a soul and what it would look like.
Finally I came to the idea of making water look as though it soul was resonating out of it as though the viewer was seeing the essence of the element itself or the actual leaving of the soul from its death. I also decided on using Thrice's electronic sounding theme of water and transforming that into the light spectrum. I also decided to have a black and white photo as a mug shot in the collection to characterize the element itself.
I used various (yet simple) optic devices along with natural and artificial light along with water (of course) to achieve the look of these photos.
