Brittany Fucci Artist Statement My belief is that one cannot claim to have seen something until you have

photographed it since the second I first picked up a camera, my work has in some way, shape, or form, been a reflection of my pursuit of the moment, and trying to capture it. For me, my photographs are the medium that I use to tell stories everything that they mean is everything than I cannot properly express through words, and so instead, I use light, color, space, and form, to convey my thoughts. My work creates an alternate reality that I myself can live in (and so can the observer). It is, essentially, a surrealistic alternative to reality, and beyond that, is a separate narrative in itself. I am particularly inspired by my home environment, and most of my work compares living in middle-class suburbia to living in an urban city there are no models, or people, but instead, I chose to represent that subject by photographing landscapes at night, which allows me to explore the so-called abandonment of rural cities. With my work, I try to answer the questions that race through my mind. Why is it that everything shuts down at night? Why are we (figuratively) so afraid of the dark? Do we hide ourselves at night for a certain reason? These questions are answered in my body of work entitled, Nightscapes. In this series, by using long exposures, I manipulate the appearance of the world in front of me, and allow the camera and the light to paint their own visions of the world. The images are a series of work that presents the world in an almost post-apocalyptic manner. They are devoid of human life, and the only motion present in them is that of the moving lights. Color is also a device that I rely on heavily to convey the meanings in my photographs, and this particular series puts to use a lot of greens, yellows, reds, and oranges. I aim for the colors to create emotion in the observer, as people most certainly relate different colors to different feelings. For example, the color yellow is known to make people feel anxious. With certain aspects of my work, I aim for people to feel anxious, uncomfortable, and enclosed in a frightening space while they are viewing the photographs. The surrealistic reality is created with colors, and is exactly that a place that is simply non-existent, which is what makes it so distant and confusing. The color green can relate to feelings of sadness or indifference, and it also is overwhelmingly present in my work. My images from the Nightscapes series are not meant to invoke a sense of happiness in people. Instead, they can essentially be described as a world where one is forced to fight their demons. The confrontation between the real and the unreal is what I am creating. Though the images are untitled, each specific one represents this confrontation in its own way. One image in particular, taken in the industrial part of Chelsea, in New York City, shows a long building with only half of its windows lit up the street is desolate, and there are puddles everywhere. A white light streak travels through the center of the block, and stars created by the lampposts burst out in multiple directions. The photograph makes one feel eerie, and out of place. The goal of this series was essentially to make the observer question whether the world they are in is real or fake.

As I continue to explore this world that I am basically producing by manipulating the space, light, and appearance of the environment through long exposures in the camera, I find myself growing as an artist, and developing a significant style. In the future, I hope that what I am exploring in my artwork now can become the body of work that defines who I am as a photographer. I plan on continuing to photograph landscapes in an experimental manner, so that I can continue to grow as an artist, and so that I may progress onto other projects where I can convey my same thoughts in a different manner, and in various mediums that explore a world beyond landscape photography.