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S T A T E M E N T
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I explore artificiality and awkwardness in the seemingly normal everyday by isolating the incongruous details in the environment and through portraits directed to evoke a sense of displacement in the subjects. I approach my work through two different registers, situating the conceptual and critical use of the medium within the long tradition of snapshot and staged photography, and - most recently - digital manipulation.
WIDE RECEIVERS (2009-2010)
In Wide Receivers I am
interested in how society and human
behavior are becoming simultaneously tribalized and atomized amidst the
ever
increasing noise of mass (over)communication, media, and electronic
handheld
devices. I create visual fictions that seduce the viewer into exploring
observations I draw directly from the world – a process possibly
similar to
caricature and re-invention. They are digital collages constructed
from
images I shoot at public events, networking events and at meet-ups of
subcultures that were formed and/or are operating as a result of social
connectivity on the Internet. Compositing the source photos heightens the intra-group
dynamics and throws off the viewer's ability to find a primary point-of-view,
thus generating an underlying disruption: the participants, while appearing
connected within a social network, also appear atomized in a contrived pose or
uncertain gesture.
My investigation is based on the idea that consumer culture influences
the construction of personality. American commerce – now worldwide –
seems to offer broad opportunities for individuals to re-describe
themselves while, through media imagery, proposes set categories to
simulate. It seems that the popular media, advertising and the ubiquity
of
handheld electronic devices (many containing cameras and access to
external
“realities” via wireless internet) now dictate behaviors and create
stereotypes
for society at large, similarly to how powerful institutions used to do
in the
past – marriage, family, class, school, religious code, etc. While mass
media
is a young institution – if it can be called as such – it is old and
powerful
enough to have influenced at least one generation from birth all over
the
world. In the current age of reality TV shows, “seamless” product
placements,
celebrity endorsements, and online social identities, we enter a phase
in which
the distinction between mediatized and non-mediatized behavior becomes
increasingly blurry: the two categories form a behavioral feedback loop
between
each other that is becoming ever noisier.
While we detect and possibly lament the effects of vapid media imagery
on human
behavior, it is also important to consider that the possibility for
individuals
to be influenced by certain types of behavior – whether inspired by
media or
any other cultural traditions – may very well have liberating effects;
it provides tools for creative self-transformation, re-description and
escape from suffocating and overly staid institutions and stereotypes.
ON DISPLAY (2004-2005)
I peer into shop windows, looking for evidence of disharmony and discrepancy in the details of their scenic ingredients. My aim is to capture a moment when the unfamiliar and contingent are unexpectedly caught commingling with the mundane and highly staged.
The scenes that I photograph are comprised of mannequins, animals, food, and props that have been transposed from their various contexts into a vacuum of commercial exhibition. When I approach them with my camera, I search for details in their newfound context that seem incongruous with the commercial image or message they are trying to convey. I find that when I isolate and enlarge this tension in a picture, it brings to the surface dormant content that triggers or suggests possible narratives seemingly underway beyond the frame of the picture.
While taking these pictures I am continually negotiating between snapshot, staged, and street photography. I look for movement and animation in the stationary and non-animated, the impromptu and fantastic in the rehearsed and commonplace.
SEAMLESS (2009)
In these studio setup images, I wished to reveal the actual behind-the-scenes styling methods used to create the illusion of the "perfect fit" in fashion advertisements. The pins, clips, thread, sinker weights, and tape illustrate the ways in which the subject may appear immaculately groomed, casually posed and carefree from one angle, and tightly bound, intricately constrained and obsessively consumed from another. I aimed to contrast the tight framing and close cropping with a limitless, gradient space so as to give the impression that the subject is weightless and floating in a vast universe of infinite possibilities.
STILL (2006-2007)
If photography turns subjects into objects and freezes motion, a similar transformation occurs in accidents caused by motorized vehicles: their victims potentially confront death and paralysis - two states that impose stillness onto life. Temporary or permanent immobility transforms the active subject into a frozen observer of both the outside world as well as their own new position in it. They experience a disconnection from the familiar and are re-evaluated by their environment and themselves. This rather uncanny parallel was the point of departure for this series, which struck me while I was recovering from a boating accident and subsequent spinal surgery.
I ask the subjects - family and friends - to relax their facial muscles and to direct their gaze away from the camera, pretending as if they were momentarily frozen in a routine activity. My aim is to capture a mental disconnection from time, place and context. In such moments, both the subject and viewer are presented with a precariousness that underlies much of life's clockwork routines.
Could the subjects be feeling pain, fatigue, despair, or depression while engaged in their activity? Or are they simply meditative? Are they paralyzed by the dictates of their task's proper execution, or does it render them harmoniously fused with the stillness and character of the objects that surround them? Are they dead or are they living?
HABITAT (2007-2008)
Habitat, on the one hand, alludes to an undercurrent contradiction of suburban real estate development: creating and marketing life close to nature that which is damaged in the process of its transformation into a comfortably enjoyable entertainment. On the other hand, it focuses on the collision of organic and rigid materials as well as on the imitation of the natural in the urban environment.
FIGURE IN LANDSCAPE (2008)
Figure in Landscape is a reflection on pastorals: the longing for and romanticization of nature since urbanization, nature representing the idyll one can escape to from the busy week. I photographed figures seemingly pasted in the landscape to address how our image of nature is fictional, and how removed we have become from it.
AQUARIUM (2008)
Aquarium is about the effort yet inability of people to connect. I envision this series to be installed in a room on all four walls, so the viewer would feel surrounded but unnoticed. The blue background was chosen to create a formal decontextualization of the subjects. In my Still series, the decontextualization is narrative: people, in their environment, are disconnected from the viewer and from what they do. Here, there is no environment, only the blue emphasizing artificiality. I chose to shoot this series on a cheap digital SLR camera and then manipulated the images to create a seductive colorful look, but ultimately fuzzy and broken down when blown up to show blemishes and the imprecision of masking.
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