Senior Project
Check it out!
Check it out!
Christabelle Barker is pursuing her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography from the University of North Florida and is set to graduate in December of 2025. Christabelle takes on various approaches to express topics surrounding identity, emotion, and passion. She primarily focuses on portraits, but explores a wide variety of genres, like her most recent series, titled Tales of A High School Graduation, which explored the reactions of graduates and families alike during a graduation ceremony.
Christabelle draws inspiration from the world around her—the good, bad, beautiful, and challenging. She seeks to capture the essence of life in every shape and structure, capturing emotions she wants her viewers to feel with her. Through her portraits, she focuses on incorporating each individual’s personality within the theme, empowering them to feel more confident and seen. This is evident in one of her series Ordinary People, showcased at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Jacksonville, Florida, where normal individuals are displayed as the “main character” in life. All of Christabelle’s series are shot with the intent to make people remember what it means to feel human and love the life around them.
A Thousand Words
This project is a window meant to reveal my thoughts and emotions, expressed through photography and poetry. By using myself as the model, I aim to capture my presence while displaying my inner dialogue to serve as a moment of vulnerability, confidence, and unfiltered emotion through everyday life.
Each portrait is paired with a quote from a poem I have written to convey raw emotions and thoughts, serving as a narrative behind the image. Together, they invite viewers to reminisce on their own emotions and random thoughts throughout their own day, and encourages them to think about their identities, passions, and pain as we navigate human experiences.
This series is personal and universal as it touches on my own personal struggles and self-discoveries, that many others may also resonate with. I have merged visual and literary forms to embrace the idea that sometimes we have the words, and sometimes we don’t. Ultimately, this project explores how language and imagery coexist and collaborate to express human emotion. After all, “a picture is worth a thousand words,” and these are just a few of mine.
