Artist statement

Utilizing both single-image photographs and collage, expired and unexpired darkroom

paper, these works explore the limitations of photography to present fixed identities – of

efforts to consolidate a subject within the confines of the given frame. Instead, I engage

with fragmentation and rupture, inviting the viewer to put the pieces together, questioning

what worlds can be created when we break from the imposed structures of the

photographic medium. What happens when the traditional binaries are rearranged, or

reimagined?

The collages often begin as single images, but within the darkroom printing process the

images are ripped and torn. The disparate pieces are then reattached, presenting them to

the viewer to be structured anew, employing our desire as humans to heal and preserve

relationships. Rupture and restoration are both collaborative processes.

My work is concerned with the construction of wholes from parts — moments are to

narratives as a touch is to care; as a gesture (both in my tearing of the paper, and in those

almost imperceptible physical gestures of my subjects) is to a series of possible persons

and their relationships. Present through all of this, though, is the recognition that tears –

both in images and in relationships – can rarely be seamlessly mended, and that in spite of

this there is beauty in their “repair.”

The portraits submitted are of my friends and family, the fragments are of relationships I’ve

witnessed (mothers/daughters, lovers), and the abstract images are cameraless works

printed on darkroom paper expired in the 1970s.