Ascent Photoseries
Stick around and see how Plato helped to inspire this project
Artist Statement
Based on Plato's Allegory of the Cave, this photo series seeks to dissect potential meaning from the famous allegory, and visualize it metaphorically.
The allegory illustrates an image of people chained up and facing a wall. From time to time, the wall in front of them is illuminated softly, with shadows moving across it. Shadows created by "puppeteers" out of site of the chained individuals. They have been this way their whole lives, and it is all they know. This is their world.
Suddenly, one person becomes unbound. The person wanders and finds the exit to the cave and to the daytime. The person witnesses the three-dimensional real-world and is reluctant to believe in its existence. In fact, everything is so different that the individual considers returning to their bound solitude--the only life they've been exposed to.
Eventually, knowing the truth, the person can live their life in freedom out of the cave. But this realization comes with an obligation: The individual should return to the cave in order to enlighten those chained within. Upon the person's return, the other people are difficult and hostile. Given that the only life they've known has been the one they've experienced thus far, they refuse to leave.
The new challenge lies in showing those left behind, the way out.
"The Cave"
"The Fire"
"The Shadows"
"The Surface"
"The Enlightenment"
"The Return"
Six Photos for Six Stages...
The Cave
The subject turns, revealing his sunglasses. He looks over his shoulder, almost with a sense of paranoia. He's imprisoned but does not know it yet.
The Fire
The sunglasses shown, representing both the ignorance to the real world, as well as the fire in the analogy.
The Shadows
The subject watches the shadows cast by both the trees and himself. He focuses on these contrasting outlines, questioning his reality.
The Surface
The subject removes the sunglasses, revealing what was hidden from him. He is presented with the option to put the glasses back on and to live in a comfortable lie, or to leave them behind and live in a difficult truth. He has found the surface above the cave.
The Enlightened
The subject understands true reality, and leaves the glasses behind. He is now immune to the false world created to control him by puppeteers.
The Return
The last step of Plato's Allegory is to decide whether or not to return to the cave, enlightening the others. This is the first shot in which the viewers can see the subject's true eyes, implying his righteous return to revive those still under the impression of the false reality.
The Use of Red and Green
Throughout the first three images ("The Cave," "The Fire" and "The Shadows"), the primary color used is meant to be red/magenta. This implies that the subject is still under the illusion of the false reality. The other three images, however, use green/teal as a primary color—the opposites of red/magenta. This references the subject's initial doubt and eventual denial of the reality created by the puppeteers. While the color red is meant to be primarily only in the first three, red is still present in "The Surface" and "The Enlightened." This is to further show the significance of the sunglasses being the source of the false reality, or the fire which causes that fiction.
