STATEMENT OF WORK

At the core of my practice is the question of whether empathetic visual histories are possible.  While current methodologies typically explore issues of representation and visibility, my practice instead seeks to reclaim marginalized histories by opening up the performative capabilities of images. 

Could an empathetic visual history arise from an expanded notion of photographic capture?  All of the decisive moments and straight photographies that pursue the purity of an instant in the course of our global photographic history deny that photographs continue to change once they are taken.  Or that photographs contain information that may not be initially legible at the time of their capture.  Even as contemporary photography has trended towards crystallizing sharpness and removing uncertainty, the photographic image does not reveal its meanings until much later.  Images at the time of their exposures are incomplete – the recording of light as it is reflected off our world changes with it.

The processes I have adopted in my work reflect a pursuit of expanded photographic production.  I combine processes that build upon each other, often layering multiple techniques such as cyanotype and gum bichromate, and alternate my use of analog and digital negatives.  The moment of capture loses its centrality, giving way to layers of decisions concerning paper, sizing, pigments, and the tonal range and contrast of analog printing processes.  These processes can be continuously layered, allowing for images that are open ended and always in progress, calling into question whether these photographs can ever be considered complete.