Artist Statement:
For me, photography is not just art, but a language through which I connect to the world on my terms. Human interaction, with its constant emotions and changing relationships, often irritates me.
While photographic portraiture offers a captivating challenge to me, it's in the abstraction of the inanimate where I find my solace and my voice. My perceived world is one of constant motion. I have a relentless drive to explore and reinterpret the familiar into something extraordinary, something alien, yet beautiful and abstract.
This artistic curiosity is also my refuge, a way to navigate and make sense of my mental landscape. With my camera, I capture structure in chaos, balance in disarray. I create compositions of abstract beauty from the mundane and overlooked. It's in this process of creation and curiosity that I confront and coexist with my mental challenges, finding clarity and connection in the art of abstraction.
Even my sense of humor has become an integral part of my art. It is throughout my work in hidden subjects and sometimes even titles. This is not just for amusement, but a deliberate attempt to connect. It is often my intent to share a laugh, or provoke consideration by inviting viewers to look beyond the surface and find joy in the unexpected.
Photography is both my window and my mirror. A place where the beauty of the unnoticed and the abstraction that can be drawn from it coexist.
About me:
Here is a place to see how my photography helps me connect the thousands of possible photos I consider when I walk around with my camera.
I got my first camera when I was around 8 years old, but it wasn’t until I got my first job at 14 that I could buy and use a 35mm camera and darkroom to take photographs and develop them myself.
As photography transitioned into the digital age in the early 2000’s, so did I. However my photographic style remained the same: photograph what I see without changing the environment or altering my work with heavy post-processing. My editing process has always been swift, decisive and minimal, to be sure that the integrity of the photograph stands unaltered.
There is an element of play in my work. I find joy in the challenge of artful composition. I love to make viewers pause, consider, and then lose themselves in contemplating the origins of my photographs. I love to watch as people try to figure out what they are looking at and I hope to make my photographs just complicated enough that it’s worth the time.
Through very deliberate cropping and subtle edits, I create puzzles out of mundane and everyday scenes, inviting the viewer into a game of hide-and-seek. My subjects are often hidden to intrigue the observer, drawing them ever deeper into a shared exploration of perspective and perception.
I do not remove or add anything from or to my photographs through editing software or during the exposure by physically moving around items when taking photographs. I photograph what I see. I never do multiple exposures or double exposures.