A few thoughts from an on going project...
Words and pictures.
Interested in the fluid and variable meanings produced by combining photographs and text. Process centers on the construction of books and installations functioning as a framework through which a multitude of meanings may form. Constructions are semi-diaristic, remaining unspecific. Photographs with a porous quality that, when placed in proximity to original prose, soak up those congruent meanings. Past experiences, cultural convention, and historical reference affect interpretation. The meaning of each picture becomes flexible and fleeting, the texts take on visual characteristics.
An interest in new technologies, the popularity of web-based outlets that enable anything to be broadcast by a single creator and discovered by millions. Fascinated with the duality of YouTube videos that enable a viewer to feel ‘as if you’re there’ while ultimately limiting experience to specific imagery and information. The sense of being there is simply an illusion; the essence of each recording resides with it’s creator. I think of memories similarly. Impossible to tell how many childhood memories are based on photographs or stories versus actual, independent thoughts. Photographs have the power to transform, to restore and distort memories. Words do the same yet with more flexibility. Words do not dictate a specific mental image and don’t always refer to the past; floating in between, referring to everything that already exists while hinting at what’s to come. The link between mental imagery and a physical illustration of the past.
The work...
Photographs describe a wide range of content; really poignant and personal moments to the unimportant and unnoticed in-betweens. Texts are similarly sourced from journals, notes scribbled on napkins or written in the margins of books, something between narrative and verse. When paired, an arbitrary connection dissolves under the force of imagination, memory and association. The combination transforms each image. From the classic metaphor of a window or a mirror the photograph becomes more like Alice’s looking glass, a reflective surface and a portal into another world. Neither photograph nor text is more important than or indivisible from the other.
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