|
Chris Silano
 “Photography is my therapist,” says Chris Silano, who is also using the medium for his BFA in photography at the Pennsylvania College of Art & Design. “When I have a session with the camera, we revisit current themes in my life and try to work through them. It’s enlightening and mortifying at the same time.” From a series called In the Bedroom that Silano is shooting at home in Lancaster, this portrait was part of his reponse to suggestions from teacher Dennis Preperato and fellow students. “I was trying to prove that love doesn’t exist,” says the photographer, who shoots by available light with a twin-lens reflex camera. “They challenged me to turn the camera on my own life. And when I somehow fell in love, it happened that I had a camera by my bedside.” Having realized in the process that he does his best work when he is “emotionally invested,” Silano has extended his series to include the relationship between his mother and father. Let the therapy continue.
—Russell Hart
 Francesca Pfister
The energy and chaos of the city are an inspiration to Francesca Pfister. Her recent work, however, investigates the raw materials of urban life. This image’s pastel-pink stacks of unused Styrofoam insulation were specifically intended to “protect a new building,” she explains, but have become waste by being deprived of that function. Pfister, who is currently a second-year graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania, shot the photo on medium-format film to record every nuance of the objects’ colors and textures. Her earlier city studies focused on surfaces, especially reflective windows, which allowed her to capture the city’s conflation of inside and outside worlds.
—Miki Johnson
|
