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Form Gallery: ‘Murder’ transports audience to an interactive display

Photo of snapshot from Princy Prasad 'Murder' FORM Gallery

By Brianna Holcomb

Arts and entertainment editor

When I first walked into the gallery, I immediately felt a chill go down my spine. This sounds completely illogical, but nonetheless I felt as though I was walking into a horror film. The lights in the room were covered in blue and red paper, and mock blood could be found on broken mirrors hanging on the wall.

The room itself was already small and the photographs were displayed in one corner of the room, forcing you to walk all the way inside. However, between the darkness and blacked out windows, it became smaller, almost more intimate. I felt like I was trespassing into someone’s life. Adding to this feeling, the floor had carpets placed down too.

I’m sure plenty of people have watched a crime show and watched as the police outlined the details of a murder with markers, captured each piece of evidence on camera and took samples of the blood found at the scene. This room looked like a crime scene before the police arrived.

Princy Prasad, senior English and fine arts major, has transformed the FORM gallery and made it interactive in a whole new way. She didn’t just display the pictures she took, but transformed the room into the set in which the photographs were taken – making them all the more eerie to look at.

This series of photographs was taken as snapshots from a moving picture. Using a combination of writing and art, the audience is given “[a] bloody tale of love, hate, lust, suffering and, of course, murder.”

Prasad combined her love for writing with her love for photography, giving her audience a very interesting visual effect. “I shot this body of work for a studio photography assignment. I only printed five images from the 200-plus images, since it was just an assignment. My professor and class did not see or understand the narrative. So, I took this gallery and said, ‘Fine. Do you see/hear/understand the narrative now?’ They said, ‘Yes.’”

It was very easy to see the amount of time and work that Prasad put into this gallery. She was very determined to get her point across and use not only her skills in photography but creative writing too. She placed white mask on the wall with pieces of dialogue from the moving picture written on them.

With the combination of both elements, Prasad decided to give herself limits in order to make the project more challenging. For each image she gave herself a 93-word limit, which forced her “to make the narrative move even without the images.”

This gallery featured multiple elements to make it so much more entertaining to see and experience. Look out for Prasad’s next body of work that will feature Indian beauty printed through the Van Dyke process. To see more of her pieces of you can go to her website PrincyProductions.Branded.Me, follow her on Twitter

@madebyprincy or follow her on Instagram @princyproductions.

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