This week Lenscratch is looking at some of the top 50 portfolios from Critical Mass….

Daniela Edburg’s photographs are like visual candy. Sweet and sour and always of interest. Born in Texas, Daniela grew up in San Miguel de Allende and studied visual arts in the San Carlos Academy in Mexico City. She is surely informed by Mexican culture as her work is fanciful, humorous, and thought provoking. She has exhibited all over the world and been the recipient of numerous grants and prizes.

The winning project is Knit, about compulsive knitters, but I am featuring a few samples from two additional series, Drop Dead Gorgeous and Kiling Time.

Knit:
I started doing a series on compulsive knitters, to address the subjects that fascinate me the most: The capacity to create and self-destruction, two of the most endearing and defining qualities of human nature. Now the act of knitting has become a central part of my work and through photography I speak of my experience.

These characters are dear to me, they deal with themselves and with what they have created in a very intense way. For me the knitting can represent many things: the creation of a safe place, creativity at its most basic form, an obsession channeled in an attempt to preserve mental health or a creation that destroys and consumes it’s creator, like Frankenstein’s monster.

I love the place where concepts swivel and contradict themselves, the point where things meet and complete their cycle. If idleness is the beginning of all vice and being busy it’s sole distraction, it’s possible that at some point occupation should itself become vice. Now I knit constantly.

Images from Killing Time
This series speaks of the self destructive nature of mankind and the creation of what is perceived as a safe place.

Images from Drop Dead Gorgeous
These images are a short story of death and desire.