Hell Mirage, 2013-16

“…to be lost is to be fully present, and to be fully present is to be capable of being in uncertainty and mystery.”

― R​ebecca Solnit,​ A​ Field Guide to Getting Lost

This body of work is born out of the realization that my interests lie in using photography to create an environment rather than to depict one–viewing the landscape as a studio instead of a subject, and using the camera as a receiver as opposed to a recorder. By arriving at new methods of description and seeing, I am able to generate a space between the rational and irrational where the objectivity of the camera, and our own perceptions are called into question.

I take two approaches to picture-making. The first is a straightforward, empirical method where description is of the highest importance. I think of the resulting images as samples, and use the act of photographing as a means of amassing a collection of various objects and materials. Eventually, these fragments are assembled into the temporal foundation for the rest of the images. My second manner of working exploits the material and mechanical limitations of photography to create pictures that are otherwise physically impossible. Through the manipulation of exposure, or the deliberate fragmentation of the way an image accumulates on a piece of film, I am able to construct images that are specifically photographic. While simple in their execution, these gestures have incredible potency. I am excited by the way combining these two methods of working can create a sensation of the uncanny–validating and invalidating one another simultaneously.

The liminal space created by these images frees me from the landscape photographer’s anxiety of discovering t​erra nova.​Though the source material for these images is terrestrial, the photographs depict a fabricated place – a landscape of the mind. My hope is that this work points to greater philosophical issues about orienting oneself in space and looking at the world, while simultaneously questioning the limitations of depicting time and space in a photograph.