Wilderness of Mirrors

Wilderness of Mirrors a series of photographs addressing the character of our political moment, made precarious by systems of disinformation that seek to undermine individual agency and shore-up the status quo.

Wilderness of Mirrors ​is a photographic survey of an emerging cybernetic landscape. The series  endeavors to visualize current mechanisms of surveillance and control that employ technology,  anxiety, and images as a means to destabilize and restructure belief. These discrete social and  technological systems are embedded into the fabric of everyday life, and serve to reinforce and  advance dominant structures of capital and power. 

The sequence presents these conditions as a veritable wilderness– a landscape of images and  devices that infinitely deflects, replicates, and distorts any information within its borders. The architecture of this wilderness sustains and conceals among many things a predominantly white, male hegemony. The sequence aspires to visualize a mechanism which hides in plain sight, and to this end it is populated entirely by white male figures.

The  integration of various technologies into all facets of contemporary life has rendered us stateless,  both totally surrounded and utterly alone. Our devices pull us away from the here and now,  producing endless trails of algorithmically sortable data and fueling a hyper-partisan fever, all  against the ominous backdrop of domestic mass-surveillance and psychographic advertising. 

We make and consume pictures in the ways we were taught, a ritualized vision we adopt without question. By utilizing a plurality of photographic languages and methods– ranging from formal scenes composed with a 4x5 view camera, to black and white reportage shot with harsh on-camera flash reminiscent of crime scene photography– this project positions technological sight as a means which serves and conceals an oppressive social architecture.

Ultimately ​Wilderness of Mirrors​ aspires to locate the intersections of simulation, power, and  concealment in order to disentangle the mesh of our personal, political and digital selves;

it  describes an urgent need to reclaim the agency we have traded away for convenience. The work seeks to question default realities and reframe our relationship to this digital landscape before it  is completely determined for us.