Rolling Sevens (pt. 1)

This is the first half of my Arts & Ideas Image/Text Thesis (Highest Honors).

In a fit of insomnia one night during my sophomore year of college, the idea for this project was born through a poem furiously typed into my phone. In this poem, the narrator (“i”) is tasked by their oppressor (“you”) to do the impossible: roll a seven on a six-sided die.

These poems spiraled into a whole world of metaphor, all showing an unhealthy cycle where “I” reckons with the impossibility of tasks prompted by “You.” I chose black and white film as my medium because it lends itself to the aptly-titled “black and white thinking” of being caught in a narrative cycle like this one. These grids of photos are called “contact sheets,” a procedural aspect of traditional darkroom printing that film photographers use.

At the end, the narrator begins to break free of the cycle of oppression by revolting and refusing to comply to the oppressor’s demands.