I am jointly interested in creating photographs that capture how an individual desires to be seen; and how to harness individual acts of artifice and fantasy towards a broader re-imagining of the landscape.
Artist Statement - The Actual Truth
The series of works on paper ‘The Actual Truth’ captures friends and strangers inhabiting a world that is both brash and seductive against a streetscape that is structurally similar to our own. I am jointly interested in creating photographs that capture how an individual desires to be seen; and how to harness individual acts of artifice and fantasy towards a broader re-imagining of the landscape. A heavy emphasis on kitsch and camp in my sets reminds the viewer that the world we construct around ourselves is often based in fantasy. I draw from tropes of past advertising and decor and project a longing into the future. My photo practice involves large format photography on glass and metal plates, a process known as wet plate collodion, or tintypes. On-site development of the mirror image plates makes them ideal for collaborations. These plates are then scanned, digitally manipulated, and used to create large format prints through a myriad of industrial printing processes. By using and loosening the strict techniques of industrial printing, I bring an element of unpredictability and uniqueness into processes meant for uniform mass production. Printed by hand with generous applications of transparent base and varying sized tools, ‘The Actual Truth’ editions use hand coloring, spot color, and a large halftone dot to disrupt the four-color screen printing process still used in commercial image production. The constant manipulation of images—through lens, scanner, plate, screen, merges the divide between fantasy and reality. The Images in my work are suspended in an imprecise timeline and blur the boundaries between documentation and fiction, history and fantasy.