Graceville
In the winter of 2018, I was able to uncover a town that no one had ever heard of before – a town called Graceville. Graceville is a town surrounded by nature and peculiar people. I do not think that Graceville is a town that is necessarily rooted in its history, but rather, the individuals themselves. When my interviewees talked about Graceville, they pointed out the physical places and the types of people they had encountered, as well as their own backstories.
Robbie Gibson
Bartleby and George
John and Amelia Bigby
Trina
Smith Garden
John MacDougall
Stephanie and Hannah Ziegler
Wes Fernie
Tina Snow
Ricardo Semur
Graceville is a fictional town, and it was developed through collaboration between myself and my models. I told them what I wanted to see visually, took them to a location, and then interviewed them on the spot, allowing them to create their own characters. I do not expect people to garnish sympathy for these characters right away. Since the characters were not planned, I could not plan on how I wanted the audience to feel about them. Some seem like caricatures and others appear to be more realistic. No matter the outcome, this process has reminded me about the power of storytelling and imagination. I love being taken to another world through books and movies, but I have also enjoyed making up new places and worlds my whole life. My models had a lot of fun while working on this project, and they all truly embodied their characters. This was not designed to be a serious project, but instead afun experiment in creating another world not entirely on my own.