Ben Livengood

Simply put, to gaze into the scene of a familiar photograph is to relive the moment, to re-know the person, and even to allow the mind to paint with all the connotation and conception that life has so colorfully spread across your palette since you first laid eyes on that now familiar scene.

However, when the scene within the photograph is not one that is familiar, the opportunity for the abstract and the surreal becomes more prevalent, as we try to interject our understanding upon a place and time where we were not. Atmosphere and expression become our biggest allies in corralling our own imagination, and through that direction from the photographer a new moment and scene are born in the eyes of each new beholder. A single complex moment, that would otherwise be forever lost in time, is captured to be gazed upon and understood in countless ways that it often never existed in the first place. 

The essence of my desire to take photographs stems from a love of grand experience. In photographs we combat the mundane. We live our greatest moments time and time again, as well as projecting ourselves into the great moments of others. I take photos to remind myself of where I am, and where I am not, so that my self awareness stays close and I can hold on to the motivation it takes to live the majority of my days on top of a mountain.