The Lighthouse Project

• Prize
• Photographer
  Meghan Boody, United States
• Date of Photograph
  online
• Studio
  Looking Glass Labs
• Website
  http://lookingglasslabs.com

The "Lighthouse Project" takes place in a 19th century Anglo world of Dickensian institutions and vast moorlands and tundras where urchins and strays struggle to find their way. The digitally composited images tell the story of a young girl, the inmate of a workhouse / asylum who escapes when the building burns down. Freed from her menial existence, she wanders through barren and wild countryside where bogs threaten to swallow her whole and sheer cliffs impede her progress. The titles of each piece - which are derived from the first lines of Victorian novels with orphan protagonists â?? draws one to the plight of the lost child star who narrowly escapes disaster and soldiers on. From image to image she gradually gets her bearings as she approaches the lighthouse, her ballast and lodestar that beckoned to her from her dormitory window in the asylum. Each photograph portrays a dramatically sensitive moment of her journey, a visual lynchpin in the character transforming quest of the young subject. One must fill in the blanks of the familiar tale of the lost orphaned child while encountering mythic symbols (i.e. the beacon of light, the dour school mistress, the haunted house) which guide the way and supply the connective tissue between images. By invoking the ancient joining power of storytelling, this picture story of transformation reaches out to the psychic core of others. As the girl relentlessly pursues her search for an intact self, castaway pieces are gradually found in the universal struggle for belonging and a home.

• Biography
  Meghan Boody is a multi media artist. She grew up in New York City and went to the Brearley School. She received a B.A. from Georgetown University in philosophy and french, and apprenticed with the photographer, Hans Namuth, for three years where she received her photographic training. Boody began integrating Photoshop and digital compositing into her work in 1994 and is considered one of the first photographers to successfully employ this new technology. Her large scale photographic tableaux tell fantastical stories of the human condition and explore the wilderness of the subconscious and the tumult involved in psychological transformation. Comprised of hundreds of interwoven layers, each image depicts an elaborate imaginary environment where characters in period dress roam through tentacled narratives. Often on a plane to the more remote corners of the globe, Boody seeks out strange topography and extreme nature to use as the base for her preternatural images. Boody designs unusual sculptural frames for each photographic series. The frames of her current series, â??The Lighthouse and how she got thereâ?? are unique and feature a large glass eyeball and metamorphosing creatures in relief. Boodyâ??s otherworldly esthetic has crept into her baroque homes which have appeared in The Telegraph Magazine, Homes and Gardens and New York Magazine. Her work is shown widely in galleries and museums internationally and is in important collections including the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Herbert F Johnson Museum at Cornell University. For the first time, Boody will have two simultaneous solo shows in NYC - in March 2011. The complete Lighthouse series will be exhibited at Affirmation Arts (which will travel to Galerie Caprice Horn in Berlin in April) - and â??Psyche and Smutâ??, a photo novella of twin sisters lost in an underground city ruled by frogs and concubines, will be shown at Salomon Contemporary. She currently lives and works in Tribeca, NYC with sculptor Randy Polumbo, her 9 year old son, 3 dogs and one fat cat.