The people and places I photograph are familiar to me if not intimate parts of my life. The images walk a thin line between the staged and the candid. They are glorified snapshots. Teetering between personal nostalgia and cinematic storyline, the photographs form a narrative with associations only loosely implied. The questions that arise in the absence of information and the innately missing elements of the narrative are an essential component of the work. Light and shadow work to reinforce the tension between the seen and the unseen and perpetuate the duality of the sinister and the beautiful. We assert reality as what we can see. But, still, we cling to the belief that things remain even as darkness absorbs them. Similarly, we draw conclusions from what information we are given and project our own ideas and emotions onto the work. The lingering question of façade unites the work, as does the repeated reference to the everyday.
The mundane has inherent significance as it relates to our personal lives and relationships. It forms the vastest portion of our experiences. The everyday is who we are when we think no one is watching. The documentation and elevation of the ordinary and the familiar in my work serve as expressions of sentiment. Feelings of longing and melancholy are punctuated by aesthetic appreciation and attention to the beautiful. The photographs are a constructed memorial to the time and place in which I currently reside. They stagnantly reference the fluidity of life. Nothing is permanent and nothing is exactly as it seems.
This body of work combines an intellectual assessment of the photographic medium and documentation of the everyday with emotional expression and story telling. It is the culmination of a desire to express the love and frustration I feel towards my home in the South and my analysis of the cultural implications of the digital photograph.
