Obsessive Becoming is a series in which I analyze and dissect the landscape through a digital lens and it’s relationship to virtual reality.  In virtual spaces, environments are not three-dimensional, but two-dimensional surfaces warped within three-dimensional space.  While it may look convincing, these worlds are flat and hollow.  The project is meant to evoke a sense of unease and serves as a commentary on how virtual reality is quickly approaching the uncanny valley.

Obsessive Becoming is available for purchase in book form.  If you are interested, visit my online store here.

Landscape is often utilized as proof of the existence of a location, yet the images in Nowhere Gaze are meant as recordings of time and motion within a space, and not as a documentation of the space.

The images in Nowhere Gaze are made using tri-color separation, an early color photographic process. In these photographs, everything that is still stays its original color, whilst everything in motion becomes vibrantly colorful.

From a distance, the photographs in Nowhere Gaze still retain their saturation, but zooming in to the images reveals that these iridescent rainbows are even present at the pixel level. From second to second, there are movements in nature so miniscule that our eyes cannot detect them; yet with the aid of photography, we can view how seemingly inactive landscapes subtly shift over time.

The purpose of Ghost Scans is to expand the definition of “photography” and how the medium can be warped beyond recognition: the project starts where Walking Simulator ended. Instead of utilizing real world locations, I took screen captures inside popular video games and made three-dimensional models from those. The virtual environments are very geometric, but the textures overlaid on the geometries give the spaces a sense of reality. The process looks past the texture, and since it has difficulties with perfect geometric shapes, turns the landscapes into unrecognizable blobs.

These models then were overlaid with rainbow textures meant to emulate the aesthetics of hyper-color data visualizations. Finally, these images were printed and then re-scanned: a process which was done to “actualize” the images, bringing them into the realm of photography.

Even in the modern age, analog photography is thriving.  Many photographers enjoy the color, even attempting to emulate it with their digital work.  Some like the slow pacing that film forces the photographer to maintain.  Personally, I shoot film for the materiality of the medium.  I see the differences between analog and digital photographic process like the differences between oil and watercolor paints: each one has its own unique qualities.

My aim with my most recent project, Apotheosis, is to juxtapose the materiality of analog photography and the digital materiality of the contemporary camera.  It was crucial to find a balance between the two, as I don’t place either as being “better” than the other.  Every medium has a purpose.

The images were made with a wide range of photographic processes including pinhole photography, iPhone apps, glass negatives, and instant films.

Transforming a photographic series into a interactive video game was not as daunting of a task as I thought it would be.   The same technique utilized to create the “endless” textures in Walking Simulator can also be used to create seamless textures for virtual environments, and it seemed apt to turn a photographic project about video games into a video game itself.

If you have an Apple computer, you can play the interactive version of my 2016 project, Walking Simulator, here.