Chaos- a feeling of complete and utter disaster with no solution. For many, this is a popular emotion regarding school and the education system. During the school year, many students can feel as if they are surrounded by work and overloaded to the point of distress. Work can pile up continuously and stress a student to unimaginable levels. School can simply become chaotic. In my artwork, a student is sitting around work that is piling up and has her head in her hands, not knowing where to start. This scene is familiar to many and the tension is clear.

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In order to create this scene, I laid out actual school work, binders, and loose papers to mimic the setting of when one is doing homework. I exaggerated the amount of work by overlying the photo of just the papers on top of the photo the included the subject with her head in her hands. I did not tell the subject what to do and allowed her to choose her own body language so it was more authentic of a stressed looking pose. The first time I shot this photo, I took a separate photo of the subject and the piles of work and edited the girl into the photo. I did not like how this worked, but my goal was to further exaggerate the size of the work and make the subject appear small. Instead, she looked larger. Upon reshooting, I further exaggerated the workload but also changed the setting and the angle of this photo to be on a desk and in a way that the subject’s body language could be seen. This change in setting created a more natural environment and better conveyed the chaotic feeling that school was giving the student.

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My work is representative of the struggle that students feel when they feel overwhelmed by school work and the consequent feeling of chaos created from it.