SoFA gallery presents master’s thesis 10 years in the making

Images of a man’s face flash by rapidly on 10 monitors, outlined by shifting people and places around and behind him. Sometimes he moves, like stop-motion, across an ice rink or a street, eyes never straying far from the camera. Each photo or group of photos represents a day, every individual monitor flowing through a minute-long series of images that represents one year of this man’s life, a decade altogether.\nThe man is Kevin Mooney, a 51-year-old Master of Fine Arts student in photography at IU, and the project is his master’s thesis “Metamorphoses.” On display at the School of Fine Arts Gallery until May 3, the project is composed of more than 6,000 self-portraits taken every day of Mooney’s life since January 1997.\n“When I turned 40, I wanted to see if I could just document myself, take a picture every day of my 40th year, and at the end of a year, I just continued to do it,” Mooney said.\nArranging the thousands of photos in what he called an “organizational and logistical nightmare,” Mooney was able to create something unusual in a photography project: movement.\n“It has references to film, like the illusion of motion,” Mooney said. “That’s exactly what I’m doing here but with less frames; some of them morph together. There’s frame-blending.”\nMooney uses this method to showcase the changes that have occurred in his life as he moves into middle age. In 10 years, he’s lost 80 pounds, a beard and a ponytail, but “Metamorphoses” illustrates more than just the photographer’s obvious physical differences. The project shows where life has taken Mooney, from his work as a commercial photographer to his last three years at IU.\n“There’s an internal change that I see, as I change jobs, change careers, change locales,” Mooney said. “When I started this, with my job I did a lot of traveling. You see me in Korea, you see me in London, you see me in Paris, Australia, hiking, backpacking, doing a lot of different things. You get a sense of how we change as individuals.”\nMooney originally intended to create one large print of his work but was restricted by his allotted space in the gallery. Though the method of presentation is unusual, James Nakagawa, an associate professor of Mooney’s, believes the project will be successful.\n“It’s going to be pretty intense because each monitor will change really fast,” Nakagawa said. “A print on the wall is kind of static; this way I think the viewer will experience his intention of taking photographs every day.”\nRegardless of Mooney’s original intentions, the photographer hopes the end result will have an impact on those who visit the gallery.\n“What I hope people will come away with is potentially a look back on their own life, and maybe not necessarily reevaluate, but get a sense of where they are now, where they might be in 10 years and just at least enjoy it,” Mooney said.\nThe School of Fine Arts Gallery is open noon to 4 p.m. Tuesday to Saturday, and is closed Sundays and Mondays. Admission is free.