Hierophanies
HTML ; CSS ; PHOTOSHOPHEIROPHANIES is a visual archive, comprised of found and gifted objects, recorded with an Epson WF-2750 scanner, presented in interactive web form.
“Hierophany” is a term defined by Mircea Eliade as a “manifestation of the sacred…something of a wholly different order, a reality that does not belong to our world, in objects that are an integral part of our ‘profane’ world.”
The most emblematic of the 25 objects in the archive is the wallet of a friend, found waterlogged in a yard after he had died a few years before.
This served as the initial inspiration for the archive, an investigation of loss and the mechanics of memorialization.
What followed was an exploration of various loci of memory, from craigslist estate sales…
to google earth images of burial sites…
to a cemetery in Queens where the metal headstones have warped and rusted over time, monuments made to combat loss themselves being lost.
Ultimately these explorations led back to the initial inspiration: objects that hold and emanate meaning.
Read a full essay on the final project here.