The project is entitled, ‘The Fourth Wall’, derived from the theatrical term for the invisible barrier that separates the audience from the fictional characters on stage. More often, the phrase is used in reference to breaking that wall down.
For me, this all relates back to our earliest impressions of the world around us. As children with wild imaginations, we are taught that the world is separated into reality and fantasy, fiction and non-fiction. These early teachings are perhaps what plant the seeds of curiosity with pretending we are in a place or time that we are not.
Then the 1950s, Walt Disney fueled this fire when he set out to create a fantasy world that was designed and marketed not just to children, but adults as well. This led to the creation of Walt Disneyland, and laid the groundwork for the larger more grandiose Walt Disney World shortly after his death.
With an economy in disarray and one of the worst natural disasters in modern history, people are looking for these brief escapes from daily life now more than years past. I will be exploring these ideas by documenting these geographic locations, both large and small, which celebrate participation in these altered theatrical realities.
