Upon hearing the word “lost”, one may assume that it means unsure of location or confused regarding their direction. I did not want to shoot something literal or connotative and instead decided to approach the prompt in the sense that no one is ever truly lost or misguided, everything is a conscious choice and where one ends up is where they are supposed to be. My artwork depicts a burning map, left behind on the ground. This is to represent how the subject did not need the map as he or she knew exactly where they were going, even if they physically did not. My initial idea involving maps stemmed from my sketchbook. I took the most literal idea of lost, which was needing a map to be guided back to one’s desired location, and incorporated that into my background. Once I completed brainstorming, I decided to take it in a different direction.

 

Again, the burning map on the ground represents how the map was not needed and the subject may have been lost, but did not require a map to get back to where they were. My artwork was taken at night, when it was very dark, to display how the subject was roaming at night, an unfavorable hour for determining where one is. The subject abandoning the map at night, especially when it is harder to distinguish location, ties back into the idea of there not being any need for directions if the term lost if looked at differently. I printed out the map on printer paper so it would burn better in a photograph than actual map paper.

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Shooting for my work has taught me how to take photos outside at night. The lighting setup is very different than other works I have done before, seeing as I needed to use flash but in a way that did not wash out the flame.