Caryn Drexl has two lives. During the day, she describes herself like this : “While my images might tend to create a specific image of the type of person I might be, I’m actually pretty bubbly and light-hearted. Goofy even. I’m always trying to make people laugh.”
caryn drexl – the memory collector
But at night, her photographs are filled with mystery and bugs. Sitting somewhere between the surreal and the whimsically romantic, her images swim in subdued colour, mist and shadows. Faces of girls in lace or insects. Eating hair, wearing dead birds, drinking cups of tea. They speak of half-remembered dreams; they are visceral, sensual, equal parts horror and seduction.
Caryn’s photographs are often self portraits because “I’m the only one available at 3am when things are quiet and I’m alone with my head, and certain pesky ideas are getting louder.” and, “Other times my ideas seem a little too cruel to do to other people.”
caryn drexl – a jewel
caryn drexl – I know the pieces fit
caryn drexl – dirty pretty things
Her ideas come from many places. “Everywhere. Everything. Sometimes I sit down and look at old paintings online for a few hours. Old photos from the 20s through to the 50s. Sometimes I’m in the hardware store and something weird jumps out at me and I think “that would look awesome on someone’s head!” Or I’ll be window shopping online and I’ll notice a pretty dress and get a flash in my head of it moving a certain way and something grows from that. Often it’s just random. One second I’m chasing the dog around the couch and the next second there is an idea in my head that seems to have come from nowhere. And every once in a while I’m on flickr or tumblr or deviantart, looking at other people’s work, and I’ll see something I’m kinda grumpy I didn’t think of first, and from there, instead of abandoning the idea of ever doing it myself because “it’s already been done”, I figure out how to make the idea mine. Of course I don’t mean stealing, because I would never, intentionally, repeat someone else’s idea down to every last detail. I just figure out what I like about it, and how I can incorporate that into something that’s more my *mine*.”
Her titles for images are as loose as the inspiration for the pictures themselves. “I, for the most part, don’t want people to worry about what I mean, but to pay the most attention to what the image says to them. At the same time though there are times where there is something I’m trying to convey, or something specific I had in mind, so I kinda, sorta, try to hint at that through the title in hopes that it won’t be overlooked completely. I come up with every idea differently, I approach every image differently, so my hopes and expectations are always different. I want the title to hint at something, if there is something to be hinted at, but to also remain vague, in case there isn’t something I need to hint at, or just so that my “message” doesn’t smack someone in the face.” And, “Thesaurus.com is my good friend.”
caryn drexl – current ledger
caryn drexl – head full of roses
Caryn is a self-taught photographer working out of her home in sunny Florida. She openly admits that “Everything I know I learned through trial and error or the internet.” Although she loves the look of film, and does own some vintage cameras, for practicality she prefers working with digital images. And no big cameras either, “I have girly little hands and a dislike for big heavy cameras that’ll break my wrist or my neck, so the littler ones suit me well.”
Her love of photography started when she was about 10. After returning from a family vacation, she discovered that she had taken the only properly exposed images out of everyone. Having other photographers in the family meant that this was an admirable feat, and she was so excited about her success, she went on to take a bunch more shots. Candidly describing these next ones as “crap”, Caryn says she stopped taking photos for several years, despite continuing to claim she’d be a photographer when she grew up.
caryn drexl – little red wolf
She picked up image-making again as a teenager, by experimenting with self portraits via a scanner, and then via a webcam. “All these images would immediately be put online, included in the online journal I kept. The positive response I got spurred me on, and things just grew from there.”
caryn drexl – nose dive 2
caryn drexl – the remains of the day
caryn drexl – you don’t sing to me any more
“One day, when I’m older, I hope I can have a show that includes a self portrait from every year, age 15 on. Lastly, because of most of what I’ve said already, I consider myself an artist the internet made. It molded me and propelled me farther than I would have gone without the resources and support system it gave me. I am still not the best technical photographer, the way I started out kind of ruined me a little in that way, but at the same time I feel it allowed me to go where I wanted to with my ideas without any fear. I try my damnedest to hold onto that, regardless of what progression I’ve made.”
You can find more of Caryn’s mysteries in her Etsy shop, CarynDrexl.