“It was a huge surprise,” said local photographer Monica Escamilla, speaking of her recent $4,000 fellowship grant from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
“It was a huge surprise,” said local photographer Monica Escamilla, speaking of her recent $4,000 fellowship grant from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
A VCU undergraduate student, Escamilla said she submitted the application to satisfy a class requirement for her Conceptual Photography class, which ended up working out for the best.
“It came at a really good time too, because I was questioning a lot about whether I was making the right choice,” she said.
Ten years ago, Escamilla graduated from Penn State with a bachelor’s degree in molecular biology. After two years of working at a lab, Escamilla began to feel trapped in her job and her life, working a 9-5 and living at her parent’s house.
So she packed her bags and flew to Costa Rica to teach English as a second language, intending to return after a year but staying for two once she fell in love with the region.
The photographer found clarity in the welcoming culture and warm weather of Central America, where she was artistically inspired by the splendor of nature around her.
“It’s so naturally beautiful and I think I am drawn to natural landscapes and the beauty that can be found in nature and in the environment, which I feel like a lot of times we take for granted,” she said.
Like many who travel to find themselves, Escamilla returned home with a new appreciation for life and a determination to make the most of it. Three years later, she was accepted to the VCU Arts program and ready to begin her new career as a photographer.
Escamilla describes her work as nostalgic, because it is designed to portray or invoke a feeling of longing for something that was lost.
“I’m really drawn to bright colors and human expressions, so a lot of it is rootly based in humanity and what it means to be human and have emotion,” said Escamilla.
Escamilla typically photographs portraits, which she stages by placing her subjects in environments where they can feel comfortable expressing themselves.
Rather than coaching her models, Escamilla asks them to interact with the environment organically, so that she can capture their unique personality and mannerisms.
“Most of the time when I’m shooting I’m just waiting,” said Escamilla. “I’m waiting for a moment, I’m waiting for a feeling, I’m waiting for something from my subject. Something to capture their humanity, what makes them… them.”
Her most recent series, entitled “Forget”, is of women clad in bathing suits, and plays with shadow and expression to produce a feeling reminiscent of childhood summertime; when days were free of responsibility and the lazy fun of summer seemed endless.
Escamilla also conveys emotion through the personification of objects, whereby human characteristics are attributed to a non-human item. Her series, “The Red Balloon”, named after the 1960s French film that inspired it, portrays a large red balloon in a bizarre and touching search to find true love.
“The red balloon comes to visit three different girls and it’s choosing a partner but it never really finds it, so in the end of the series it dies – it deflates,” said Escamilla. “It’s a symbol for loneliness.”
Escamilla’s use of everyday objects as subjects reflect the style of American sculptor Alex Da Corte, whose works re-imagine household objects by displaying them outside their typical functions.
They force viewers to consider our relationship to material things, and to think creatively about their artistic uses. Her focus on portraiture that captures the spirit of ordinary people is reminiscent of the photographs of Philip-Lorca diCorcia, who also employs a combination of bright colors and shadow to dramatize his models.
Escamilla plans to use the grant money to upgrade her equipment and possibly rent a professional studio space. Part of the award money will also go towards paying her tuition at VCU.
