underlying

How does an image arise in the world? What are the necessary conditions and materials needed to make discoveries through images and exploration?

My artistic research focuses on the pressures between representation and reality through the creation and dissemination of imagery. I create photographic images that purposefully exploit the problematic contemporary western cultural categorizations and presumptions that are placed on photographic and lens-based imagery. I photograph the world — the world I can see, as well as the public domain — and also create sculptures exclusively for the camera. The resulting images engage the viewer in the conceit and deceit of the image’s actual construction, while utilizing well known methods of seductive image creation.

The work questions the necessity of being in a place to photograph and understand it, and what the exploration of a place, or outer space, means to the contemporary world of photography. Is it real exploration if a human is not present in the space? Our seen version of the world has been simultaneously explored and photographed while we walk through it, and the photographs I make reach into the previously unseen.

I make images that range from overwhelmingly large to quite small in scale, intuitively referencing historical photographic conventions (landscape, the sublime, and historical scientific imagery). I also sometimes use furniture to separate the viewer from their normal gallery experience of the work. I also make all the frames for the photographs, because in addition to controlling the quality of presentation at the highest levels, the usage of the frame reinforces the image’s presence, history, and separation from the lived world.

This work was made with an array of imaging technology: high resolution digital cameras in studios, drones, Micro CT scanners, and computer display capture, as well as the public domain to source materials that create the final images. Each piece was conceived individually, based on extensive research into the scientific, cultural, and photographic importance of each object or place.