Monster 3 by Fall '07 contender Damian van Camp

I love this photograph. I tried to look at it for awhile without reading the artist's statement because I had to decide for myself whether this creature was real or not. Now, I feel pretty dumb. Because it is real. Right?

I have been scared of the sea since as long as I can remember. I swore off eating seafood for my entire life until just about 4 or 5 months ago, when I decided that if I wanted to be a true foodie I had to foray into eating under the sea. But, I still get scared of swimming in the ocean (which I also swore off for a certain amount of years in my life--the feeling of slimy little scaly things rubbing up against my legs really irked me) and I despise people who keep fish for pets. I've attributed my deep fear for all things ocean to a few basic factors in my life: firstly, my name is Marina, which means "of the sea" (hmm...weird, right?), and secondly, I am a Virgo, which is represented in many cultures through the image of a mermaid (double weird!).

I was about to go into deep, Freudian-like, silly analysis right there, but I decided against it.

Anyway, it's not so surprising, then, that I am fascinated by young photographer Damian van Camp's series of photographs entitled "Sea Monsters". Although van Camp (or do I say Camp? van Camp vs. Camp?) is not as afraid of the sea as I am, or at least he doesnt attribute the series to coming out of that place of sea-fear, he does recognize that fear played a part in this work:

My hunt for the most general definition of fear led me to “The Unknown� – the idea that people fear what they don’t know. Further study led me to the conclusion that it isn’t “The Unknown� that’s fearful, but is instead what our imaginations project onto what we don’t know that makes us afraid. Inspired by sea-demons of folklore and the mutant demons of late 15th/early 16th century Dutch painter, Hieronymus Bosch, this series, currently comprised of eight 32�x40� digital C-prints of Frankenstein-esque sea creatures made from the real parts of actual sea life, is intended to showcase human fear. Based on the notion that Fear is the irrational product of a run-away imagination, the series attempts to uncloak and conquer the emotion by transforming sea monsters into whimsical, archetypal visual icons that symbolize, rather than create fear.

Oh, so I guess they're not real. Well, I guess that's a relief. I doubt I'd want to go into the ocean again if I actually believed that thing could be swimming somewhere underneath me.

As for van Camp, he is a recent graduate of RISD and he has a well-worded artistic philosophy, that I will share with you below:

Having grown up in New York – a cultural and commercial center of the world, I gain most of my aesthetic sense from my absorption of consumer culture and marketing. My awareness of slick, color-saturated advertising and the power of visual persuasion (both in the public world as well as the Art World itself) has been a huge influence, manifesting itself as a kind of attack plan when organizing new works. Similar to the behavior of logos and the process of branding, the distillation of larger ideas down to archetypal, iconic symbols, often including the appropriation and re-contextualization of easily recognizable, pre-established visual languages within the greater public consciousness, plays an integral roll in my image-making process. My conceptual approach is closer to that of an analytical essayist, using my final “symbols� as stand-ins for what would otherwise be written conclusions or summations.

The ultimate goal of my work, usually dealing with (though not limited to) such major themes as nature, religion (often Judeo-Christian tradition as philosophy or social science), and the primal, more animalistic side of the Human Being, is Socratic and educational – to allow people to ponder, to inspire people to question, and to demystify those parts of our past and ourselves that time and history tend to convolute.

Keep up the good work, Damian!

As for the rest of y'all, did you know it was time for you to enter your photographs into this round of Hey, Hot Shot!? You better do it soon, or I'll send one of those ugly sea monsters after you. Ha ha ha ha!