See Me At SL23B
One year ago, I returned to Second Life. The timing was accidental, during Second Life’s twenty-second birthday, I was figuring out whether this was still a place I wanted to spend my time. A year later, for its twenty-third, I somehow ended up building an entire exhibition.
That exhibition is called This Is Us.
The photographs come from the part of Second Life where I’ve spent much of the past year: its nightlife. Not because of the clubs themselves, although I enjoy those too, but because they remain one of the best places to watch creativity happen in real time. Night after night I found myself noticing the effort people put into becoming who they wanted to be. A look. An outfit. A character. Sometimes subtle, sometimes impossible to ignore. Second Life allows us to remain anonymous while expressing ourselves in ways that can be remarkably personal, and that tension continues to fascinate me.
What started as taking the occasional picture turned into Be Seen, an ongoing photography project documenting the people who make this world what it is. This Is Us is the fourth exhibition in that series and, in many ways, a reflection on the year that brought me back here.
The title is deliberate. While the photographs show individuals, together they tell a larger story. A year ago, every person in these images was a stranger. Some became familiar faces on dance floors. Some became friends. All became part of my experience of Second Life. The exhibition also marks something else for me. I built the entire gallery myself, which meant dusting off building skills I hadn’t seriously used in years. That alone was worth the challenge.
Mostly, though, this exhibition is a thank you. To the people who unknowingly stepped in front of my camera, to the friends I’ve made along the way, and to a community that reminded me why I fell in love with this strange, creative world in the first place.
https://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/SLB%20Irresistible/40/160/21
And please, also go visit Ciaran’s awesome exhibit (« slurl). I’ve seen him build it the last couple of weeks and it is absolutely amazing! I’m not sharing a picture here, because you need to experience it as you walk in.
Which you need to do. Go! Go!
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