Isabella Convertino

to shoot the sun

“to shoot the sun” is both a reflection upon my personal traumas and experiences with masculine energies, and an investigation of American suburbia. I am interested in containing and studying male power — observing its growth and erosion, sourcing its construction and relegation. In this body of work, I forge suburban geographies to create a terrarium, one in which I am able to direct and deconstruct performances of gender. Through formal regularities, each image implicates its subjects in an immobility and overexposure. Subjects and landscapes are contained, muted, and observed.

To shoot the sun is a matter of sheer impossibility. A kind of crisis. How to conquer this object? How to seize it? To try is to make a claim over a peculiar kind of deathlessness — to consider oneself so capable to the point of foolishness. I am endlessly fascinated by this hypothetical. After the shot was fired, what would happen? Would the bullet be absorbed? Would it be a

devastation? Would it double-back, and try to kill you? Would you be celebrated, if successful? Would you be condemned? I wield the camera to investigates these ideas, deconstructing suburban gender and family to locate power, and source my own coming of age traumas.