Jenna Singh

Artist Statement

I hate the city. I really wish nothing more than to be away from it, but I find that I can't ignore how much I admire the urban landscape, the sweeping skyscrapers, and architectural artistry, the way they carve shapes into the sky. Although I'd never choose to stay in such an environment, I love the city best as something to observe. I much prefer and long for places far removed from all of it; the open landscapes, the mountains—environments so boundless and beautiful they feel unreal. I'm drawn to those spaces that are isolated enough that time appears to stop. When I take photos, I try to slow down, to capture the atmosphere as best as possible. If someone was looking at my work for the first time, I'd want them to experience what I had, whether it's expansive or intimate. Through the photos' vastness and absence of people, I aim to have the viewer feel slightly detached from everyday life.  

I often will use my Kodak Pixpro-FZ45 for its quality, and I shoot photos mostly intuitively by letting the environment guide my hand. I'll look for depth and ambiance to give a photo a more cinematic look. Editing plays a major role in my images, as it can easily transform a picture into something illustrative with just a few simple changes. For that reason I don't tend to plan things out, which makes photographing feel like an activity to enjoy rather than a job to finish. Over time I've learned to focus on the mood pictures create instead of simply documenting a pretty setting: how a city can feel calm, or for a garden to feel dreamlike. More than anything, I want my photos to offer a way of seeing, a way for silence to be visualized.

— Jenna Singh, Wilbur Cross High School ’27 

< Back to exhibition page