Project Statement
The midway carnival’s essence lies not only in its visual spectacle but also in its unique ability to blur the boundaries between reality and fantasy, order and chaos, the familiar and the extraordinary.
As such, the midway carnival is a vivid example of Michel Foucault’s concept of heterotopia, which he defined as a place of otherness that functions according to its own rules and rhythms, a place that is simultaneously physical and mental, a place that present us with a vision of “worlds within worlds, mirroring and yet upsetting what is outside.”
With this series, I present images that capture the midway carnival’s startling, incongruous juxtapositions, where and the grotesque and the beautiful, the joyful and the terrifying come together in a place of layered visual and emotional complexities—a place where time is suspended in a lens of surreal undercurrents and transient impermanence.
Though these images, the viewer is encouraged to consider the deeper significance of built environmental spaces that challenge conventional notions of reality and offer a window into the interplay between fantasy, fear and desire.
I have rendered this series in black and white to emphasize the dualities of the carnival’s environment. As Robert Frank said, black and white images “symbolize the alternatives of hope and despair to which mankind is forever subjected.”
To see more images from this series, please go to my portfolio.
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