This body of work was inspired by the three children from the family that I nanny for. Whenever I am around these children I am constantly being asked by them to look at something and most of the time it is something above my head so I am always looking up. The youngest of the three boys is two years old and he seems to be the most fascinated with the idea of looking up at things. It seems as though he asks me every ten minutes or so to look at something above me and so I do. In doing this so often I’ve become accustomed to looking up even when I am not around the children I take care of. Since I have been looking up I’ve been noticing a completely new environment that I missed before. There is a whole different world above us and most people miss it entirely because they are so focused on looking at the ground or at what is in front of them. The winter months exaggerate this even further because when people walk outside they keep their heads down and move quickly to get out of the cold faster. If people took the time to walk slower, put their cell phones and other electronic devices away and pay attention to their surroundings they would notice the environments that they are missing. As I was taking the images for this project around campus I stopped and asked people if they knew of any places that had an interesting ceiling or view looking up and almost every person responded with something along the lines of “I’m not sure I don’t really look up very much”. The responses I received further proved my theory that people do not see the spaces above them even when they are interesting.
This body of work was shot with a Lomography fisheye camera on thirty five millimeter colour film because I wanted the images to have a circular look and warped effect from the fisheye lens.
