I am interested in the discrepancy between what we see and what we know. I am drawn to photography because of its ubiquitous presence in our culture and its duplicitous existence as both an indexical representation of reality and a subjective construction of it. It is a slippery medium that easily shifts from scientific documentation of a moment in time to a subjective construction of reality. I am interested in the space where these qualities contradict each other and coexist simultaneously.
My recent work expands several lines of inquiry that I have been developing throughout my artistic practice: an interest in the material properties of the photographic object; the malleability of the illusionistic qualities of the photographic image; and photography’s role in the production of iconic imagery, which, through its simplification of the subject matter and overuse, becomes cliché. I am particularly interested in the space where the authentic meets the constructed, and the real and the manipulated overlap.
My work has evolved into an investigation of idealized landscape imagery - the kind that is easily consumable and often commodified. I am fascinated with the landscape genre and its language, the aesthetic imposed onto the land through photographic framing, and the historical rhetoric inherent in these images that justified Manifest Destiny and conquest through what is left out—namely inhabitants. Through my work I address the perpetuation of a visual language rooted in expansionist ideologies as well as the gendered gaze that heroicizes the photographic possession of this landscape. Cutting, folding, and sewing onto photographs, and more recently darkroom manipulation, are gestures that I use to break the surface illusion of these images and draw attention to their artifice. By reintroducing the hand into these images, I draw attention to the mediation of these places through photographic representation and reiterate that there is little untouched in these spaces.
My recent work expands several lines of inquiry that I have been developing throughout my artistic practice: an interest in the material properties of the photographic object; the malleability of the illusionistic qualities of the photographic image; and photography’s role in the production of iconic imagery, which, through its simplification of the subject matter and overuse, becomes cliché. I am particularly interested in the space where the authentic meets the constructed, and the real and the manipulated overlap.
My work has evolved into an investigation of idealized landscape imagery - the kind that is easily consumable and often commodified. I am fascinated with the landscape genre and its language, the aesthetic imposed onto the land through photographic framing, and the historical rhetoric inherent in these images that justified Manifest Destiny and conquest through what is left out—namely inhabitants. Through my work I address the perpetuation of a visual language rooted in expansionist ideologies as well as the gendered gaze that heroicizes the photographic possession of this landscape. Cutting, folding, and sewing onto photographs, and more recently darkroom manipulation, are gestures that I use to break the surface illusion of these images and draw attention to their artifice. By reintroducing the hand into these images, I draw attention to the mediation of these places through photographic representation and reiterate that there is little untouched in these spaces.
