750 billion images are on the internet, which is only 6% of the total photos that were ever taken since most of the photos we take are never shared. 92.5% of photos are taken with smartphones and only 7% with cameras. There are 136 billion images on Google Images. Digital technology enabled us to capture everything we see, manipulate it and enhance it to be even more arresting than reality. We tell ourselves the possibilities are endless but mainly we produce the same picture over and over again. The women are all slender with velvety skin and symmetrical features, the trees have pleasing proportions, the light is golden, fluffy puppies and fluffy kittens and a zillion selfies of adolescence finagled with identical ready made filters. Abundance by repetition makes images irrelevant. Too much beauty becomes trivial and we pass by it completely and utterly unmoved. But it appears that what prevails is the comfort of the convention. So things go on and on and on… What I am trying to do is something a little different. A long time ago I noticed that ignored, and mundane reality hides the potential of inquiry, unpredictability and often hilarity. Even beauty. It took me a few good years to know when something I see will stand the burden of becoming two dimensional and what to cut out and leave in. But I feel I am getting better.

Irina Karin Boboia

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