WINCHESTER, MASS.- Joshua Sariñana’s black and white images of The Stata Center building at MIT are as disorienting as the neuroscience research he conducted there on campus. Expecting to enter the realm of research and find answers, he came away with more questions. In response he created these photographs, representing his feelings of uneasiness with the constant ambiguity of science.

“Image of Structure” will run at the Griffin’s Atelier Gallery through January 3rd 2020.

Joshua Sariñana elaborates on “Image of Structure”; “The Stata Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a monumental building, saturated with colors, that juts out in every direction. By capturing the structure in monochrome, I deconstructed this architectural work, flattened it, and transformed it into a graphical form. My aim is to pull the viewer into a surreal, disembodied space, without completely breaking from rational observation. This work was born out of a radical shift in my perception and emotion as I conducted my neuroscientific research at the Institute, where I had a direct view of the Stata Center.

As a researcher, I entered the laboratory to create theories about consciousness and to pursue truth through reasoning and scientific evidence. The longer I was at MIT, the more I came to understand the overwhelming, and unattainable, expectation to solve impossible problems and create knowledge that bends the historical arc of science. I witnessed ways that people – friends and colleagues – engaged in self-destructive behavior because of this pressure. As I honed my research skills, I grew disquieted as the secure sense of belief in rational thought and empirical evidence began to unravel. Like many others, I was left dysregulated, fragmented, and without a sense of direction. I intend for these images to represent this dis-ease.”

Joshua Sariñana, PhD, studied neuroscience at UCLA, MIT, and Harvard. His studies of the mind lead to his interest in photography. Sariñana has been exhibited in various spaces such as Panopticon Gallery, Aperture Gallery and Photoville. His work has been published in PDN, Black & White and Silvershotz, and featured in Time and CNN. Joshua has published articles on the intersection of photography and neuroscience for PetaPixel, Don’t Take Pictures, and The Smart View. He has also given talks on the intersection of photography and neuroscience at Institutions like Trinity College, Northeastern and Flashpoint Boston.