Carolyn King submits Christy Karpinski

I am still trying to figure out why, but the photos in Christy Karpinski's project, Formations, make me a bit angry. Maybe not angry but at least a little annoyed. Karpinski uses an extremely shallow depth of field throughout the entire body of work, focusing on the foreground, which is some sort of object that is holding the attention of a young child in the background. After the third or forth image I started to feel uneasy about the DOF and tried to justify its use. What I come up with is that Karpinski is trying to focus and highlight the moments or objects that create a child's "formation" of the world they live in. I may only speak for myself in saying this, but as a child, my world wasn't made up of a tiny patch of grass under my feet; I lived in a world that was a sea of green that was made up of my entire backyard, and the side yard that spilled over into the neighbor's lot up until it hit the cement of the street that ran a block until it reached the grass of my friend's house down the way. Perhaps I'm reading this all wrong...which is okay, because it reminds me that our work has to speak for itself when we aren't around to give it a voice. I guess I'm annoyed when I look at Formations, because the only thing I'm wondering is..."So what?"

http://www.christykarpinski.com/index2.php