Brett Daniels

The body can be captured in many ways. I approached this project in a way that would capture the viewer’s emotions through photographs of a suffering child. When I was told we were going to be doing a project on the body, I thought that I would tell a story of what my body has been through in it’s most vulnerable state. When I was eight years old, I was in a terrible car accident. It was on March 20, 2001, and my dad was driving us home from the store. We were close to our neighborhood and the street light turned green. We approached the middle of the intersection and a 1970 Oldsmobile Cutlass collided with our car. It struck the side of our car and I was in the passenger seat. The impact spun us about 90 degrees and when the car stopped, my dad found me unconscious. My face turned blue and I had broken ribs, with collapsed lungs. My dad immediately called 911 and began to perform CPR, and then I was flown to the hospital and taken to intensive care. If it weren’t for my dad saving my life by calling for help and him being a paramedic himself, I would probably not have lived. Thankfully I was wearing my seat belt as well, which had a huge part in my safety. This event changed my perspective on life forever and I am greatly thankful for my life and for my dad. My body is left with scars that I will have for the rest of my life and I'm left with a story. Nan Goldin’s Ballad of Sexual Dependency influenced me to do this project this way. The idea of how real her pictures were with her beaten by her significant other speaks to the viewer. Also, in a lot of pictures, the subject sees that their picture is about to be taken, and poses for the camera. In this case, there is no glorified posing for a picture, and in essence, the subject is in a real state as if there were no camera. Nan Goldin presented us with the idea of grotesque strategy in photography. I wanted to create the same feeling of an unpleasant and abnormal state that was real and would evoke an audience’s emotion to change.