The decision to manipulate the viewer through the juxtaposition of stylistically flawed yet emotional images, with a cast of awkwardly familiar characters and motifs, came out of the desire to speak to the deceptive nature of photographs and art. Due to the formal and romantic nature of each image, which have been constructed and coded based on the popularized ideas of what photographs “should” be, a viewer is actively lured in. Yet the photographs are flawed, staged, and corrupted in ways that derail one’s principal expectations. It is through this impending contradiction that the work becomes self reflexive, and is able to create a specific tension that can both welcome and alienate the viewer at the same time.

The photographs using actors and models combine themes of invented and well known stories and fairytales. As part of my process, I wrote a series of one act plays that the body of work illustrates. I wanted to create a theatrical world that was both epic and transparent. Working with different types of images and tones helped me create the imbalance that I was striving for. As one experience’s the theater, I wanted the viewer to be drawn in and alienated at the same time. 

After the Notre Dame fire last year, I became interested with ideas around purpose and how it is defined by our relationship to monumental traces of human history. Not just epic buildings, or precious materials but something as simple as the accumulation of scratches on a stone wall or wooden beam. Time creates an irreplaceable value with that come stories, both truth and myth. 

Prologue To A Myth (2018 – 2020) illustrates and preforms a directionless parable about the creation of a myth. It speaks to the critical role that stories and history play in creating a sense of purpose within the undefined. Shown through the fusion of factual and fantastical forms, this work is equally a study on process as it is on the exploitative function of emotional and romantic images. I began with a set of drawings that came together in the form of a storyboard. Later, I chose to make photographs of the drawings themselves in order to transform them into subject matter. From the world of these drawings sprung a narrative film: The Spirit Guide. The film, similar to the drawings, now only exist in photographs. The performance of the myth passes through the medium of drawing, film, and photography, highlighting the process over the logic.