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Walking in Ambiguity by Dianne Hofner Saphiere

2021; American Psychological Association; Volume: 76; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1037/amp0000927

1935-990X

Dianne Saphiere,

The image on the cover of this issue is an example of a time when life can get confusing and push you a bit off balance.The artist had been photographing the Ferris wheel and fireworks at Chicago's Navy Pier and needed to take a pedestrian tunnel to get to the other side of a busy highway.It was a journey through the dark night into the light of the tunnel that produced sudden sensory overload.The tunnel was a cacophony of noise from the traffic above, with rainbow colors lined up with intensity on the side walls.The lights on the messy overhead ceiling were exceedingly bright and had attracted a cloud of bugs.She immediately captured this powerful experience with her camera.When Saphiere started working on this image in Adobe Lightroom, she saw a pretty little, inner-city tunnel with some rainbow colors and a few people.The viewer is entering the tunnel image behind the central women.Light-room, like Adobe Photoshop and other image editing software, is a program that allows a photographer to manipulate images electronically just as they were done much earlier in a darkroom with chemicals.It is a stage in the process where many creative insights occur-this artist referred to the process as "painting" her photographic images.Creating the final image is a series of decisions.Saphiere blurred the walls and floor, making the trio seem solid while all around them is fluid.That is where the title: Walking in Ambiguity came from.She decided to keep the man who was walking a bit further along in the tunnel, because without him, the image looked too contrived.She kept the hazy line of lights on the top right, the neater line of lights on top left, and the black lines that added dimension to the floor.The result: an image that encapsulated how she felt as she entered that tunnel.Her reaction to this experience embodied a life skill: being all right with ambiguity in this world of ours, learning to make space, listening to, and holding onto the ambiguities in life.Born in Wisconsin, Saphiere enjoyed a legacy she called an "artistic eye."While taking care of a family of five youngsters, her mother created drawings in charcoal.Saphiere labeled her father a Renaissance man who, among other pursuits, was a gemologist and a master carpenter; she clearly considered him clearly an artist.