Real Spaces

“Real Spaces”, reimagines the interstices of domestic and urban spaces with nods to the history of photography. Contrasting photographic imposters with contrived images this series consists of uncanny cardboard constructed environments.

“Real Spaces”, reimagines the interstices of domestic and urban spaces with nods to the history of photography. Contrasting photographic imposters with contrived images, this series consists of models that portray similar subjects explored by renowned photographers such as Gordon Matta-Clark, Lee Friedlander and Robert Adams. The task of building a model to emulate an existing image, and then photographing it becomes absurdly humorous, as it attempts to mock reality. Juxtaposed to these reproductions are artificial pictures, structured to emulate my own drawings. By contrasting replicas of previously photographed places with concocted ones, I’m subverting attention and unraveling truths. The fantastical and the conventional blend, making the ordinary extraordinary.

The inspiration for this body of work began after I moved to New York. The city’s boundless architecture and manifold man-made spaces, along with the constant flow of construction, demolition and rebuilding, sparked my investigation into the tyranny of the urban enclosure. The photographs examine the dynamics of space, property, and the illusion of environmental possession and permanence. Deconstructing my perception of ownership, inspired me to recreate specific places in time, in order to make them my own. These imitations specifically facilitate a narrative of reconstruction. I am fascinated by photography that is able to excavate magic out of the mundane; banal subjects brought to life through the precise angle of the light. In replicating the world around me I’m trying to unravel man's folly in his constructed surroundings.

The pursuit of the uncanny drives me to accentuate the absurdities inherent to representation. By building and photographing models, this further creates the disorientation of space, time and scale, to create a particular kind of illusion. Not the big flashy kind, where an elephant disappears right before your eyes, but the subtlety of the card-counter, the sleight of hand, and unnoticeable graceful dance of the pickpocket. I am not a wizard, there is no real magic here. The best tricks are the ones we don’t even see.