Elia de Leon
Photographer and artist whose personal practice is a deeply personal exploration of emotions and experiences, manifested through conceptual photography. Drawing inspiration from both conscious and subconscious thought, I create unconventional narratives that explore themes of grief, struggle, depression, and familial relationships through experimental photo manipulation and compositing. I am dedicated to pursuing a career in the arts and on a constant lookout for opportunities that might allow me to do so.
Rumination
Rumination is an exploration of identity and its loss through the lens of depression and anxiety. It is grounded in vulnerability as internal feelings are externally represented, open to imposed judgement. Compositing, layering, and filtering techniques are used to obscure, modify, and disrupt a single portrait in a series of iterations. I use repeated textual elements across each frame to narrate the image in a way that describes that experience; where one might indicate the feeling of emptiness or isolation, another might highlight the feeling of being buried or overloaded. These experiences are not unique, and neither is the portrait used as a base for all the pieces, but each image speaks synonymously.
I had another dream...
This is a photobook project I worked on exploring memories, experiences, and emotions that relate to my distant childhood home through metaphorical imagery and photography. As the narrative of the 'dream' unfolds, I reflect on the emotional disconnect, the desire for understanding, and a yearning for familial love and connection. I include images taken during the ealier years of my life alongside still-life photographs of objects that I immigrated with, set in a barren product photography environment, to illustrate the ongoing feeling of disillusion and grief.