DUALITIES | 20 Images
Paradox has bedeviled me for as long as I can remember. I always wanted life’s choices to be crystal clear not fuzzy, either/or rather than both/and. But, of course, life never played by my rules. I kept encountering situations, decisions and individuals that carried contradictions at their core. I tried to understand these paradoxes intellectually, but only got more frustrated and confused. Finally I called on my artistic eye for help. And so my photo project, Dualities, was born.

Brooks Jensen, editor of LensWork magazine, was one of the first to see and understand what Dualities was all about. Three years after he had published Dualities as a Bonus Portfolio in LensWork 77 Extended, Jensen had this to say about the project on his blog, LensWork Daily:

“Metaphor and simile are techniques we usually associate with writing, but there are visual versions of these things, too. Patricia Lay-Dorsey's entire project is about visual similes. It's an exercise in changing our habits of thought that, for most photographers, is all about subject and narrative. In this body of work there is no narrative. Instead, there is a fascinating way of seeing that brings differences into a kind of visual unity that can be shocking, humorous, enlightening, and almost without exception surprising. This is one of the things I found fascinating when we published this portfolio. Viewing Lay-Dorsey's work was a wake-up call, a splash of cold water, jolting from our habits. This is a good thing for those of us who are pursuing the creative life.”

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