Artist Bio
Lane Thompson (b. 2002) is a photographer interested in using found objects to create strong, representational narratives based on his lived experiences. He uses found objects such as dolls in eccentric outfits, toy firetrucks, and Halloween masks, staging them as props and actors within the context of each scene or memory he recreates. He then shoots these staged scenes with different cameras, digitally, on 35mm film, and 4x5 film, making each photo distinct from the last.
The playful, whimsical nature of his photographs acts as a bright wrapping paper taped around and covering up the darker, more difficult themes in his work, including his parents’ divorce, imposter syndrome, and the deaths of loved ones. Thompson’s inspirations also come from his immense love of movies and from his view of set design and prop implementation as means of conveying a complex story.
Thompson earned his AB in Interdisciplinary Art from the University of Georgia and is currently pursuing his MFA in Studio Art at the University of South Carolina. He has exhibited works in Cortona, Italy, and Athens, Georgia, and participated in UGA’s Cortona Study Abroad Program.
Artist Statement
I grew up watching strange shows on dusty videotapes played on an old tube television, studying the intricacies and oddities of moving images. From these experiences, I developed a taste for the bizarre and unorthodox, which I explore through photographic and sculptural processes. The use of found objects and materials associated with childhood, specific places, and family environments gives my work an appearance of innocence while grounding it in a sense of place, allowing for a veiled descent into more serious subject matter shaped by personal and inherited memory.
My work examines the masking of harsh memories with more desirable fantasies. Memories from both my early life and recent experience are difficult to convey without creative mediation. Through fantastical interpretations of these moments in time, I create room for examination and reckoning with past events, often recounting loss alongside moments of familial connection. Memory in my work is not fixed, but unstable, shifting, obscuring, and reforming over time.
I construct a tangible mythology to be considered and pieced together, one oddity at a time. Working with photographs, projections, light, and found objects, I make spaces that shift perception while evoking physical and psychological landscapes tied to place and family. Each element functions as a memory, and each memory as a story. My goal is to use this power of remembrance as a creative tool, inviting viewers to reflect on their own experiences and recognize their own memories within the work.