Rahshia Sawyer 2020

Rahshia Sawyer is a creative professional and third-culture individual based in the Washington DC area.

 

She is the Head Experience Designer for Data Ethics and Privacy at Capital One, focusing on the intersection of consumer rights, data privacy, and regulatory compliance.
 

As a professor at George Mason University, she teaches the nuances of photography and visual communications.
 

Her passion is finding beauty. As an internationally recognized photographer, she examines Resilience, analyzing the balanced (or imbalanced) relationship between beauty, chaos, and vulnerability as an anchor to our humanity.

Series:

We Are Not Made Of Wood

Year:

2012

About This Project

The form is neither rising or falling but is awkwardly in-between. Imbued with experiences of losing control, creating parallels between themes of fragility and confidence. This series is an attempt to capture the strength it takes to be helpless and out of control. Their circumstance often overshadows the tenacity of one’s will. The photographs stylistically pull from master post-impressionist painters. The soft-focus underscores the abstract quality relying on movement and form, similar to Vincent Van Gogh’s paintings. His paintings were not only about the subject but, more importantly, the mood he was looking to create.

 

“Diseases exist to remind us that we are not made of wood, and it seems to me this is the bright side of it all. And after that one dreams of taking up one’s daily work again, being less afraid of obstacles, with a new stock of serenity…” – Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Mr. and Mrs. Ginoux Saint-Rémy, 30 or 31 December 1889

 

The series was awarded the Contemporary Talent 2012, Photography Category by the François Schneider Foundation.

Prints are apart of François Schneider Foundation permanent collection
Archival inkjet prints 30” x 40”