Artist Statement

As much as I love photography, over the years I’ve found myself drawn more and more to painters as well as photographers as my inspiration. The incredible works of Helmut Newton, Richard Avedon, Henri Cartier Bresson and Guy Bordin that inspired me to be a photographer in the first place, were now joined by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Banksy, Francis Bacon, Otto Dix and Adrian Ghenie to name a few. For the most part, in its traditional form, photography was no longer sustaining me creatively. Over time, the clear sharpness I used to strive for in a single image was replaced by a far more abstract, layered and sometimes distressed image. I was constantly trying to push the medium and incorporate others. I began to explore different processes and ways to layer several images without turning to digital manipulation.

In my series “In Camera” I used a very structured technique of multiple exposures on film. In my next series, “Transparent”, I came out of the camera and layered by hand individual transparencies on top of each other, reshooting them each time I added a layer. My technique in my next body of work, “Redacted”, became a form of editing in which multiple images, text and other media that I created, combined and altered to make them into a single work. I feel I pushed the “Transparent” process even further by alternating between front lighting and back lighting the images each time they are reshot. The incorporation of text is more prevalent in Redacted as well. I’ve always been fascinated not only by the lyrics of favorite songs or familiar lines of great poetry, but also by the visual esthetics of the words themselves completely separate of their meaning. I often intertwine my own poetry or thoughts into an image as well.

In “Redacted” as well as “In Camera” and “Transparent”, the two things that inspired me the most were favorite cities and favorite models. The models were especially important in “Redacted” as it is more heavily portrait driven than the other two series. 99% of the models are very close friends that I have worked with extensively over the years, which for me is essential to conveying the message or story that I am trying to tell. The human element in each image I would say is the driving force. That being said, without my love for travel and cities, none of the images in “Redacted”, “Transparent” or “In Camera” would exist.

In my current series, “The individual”, I feel I have finally successfully merged my two inspirations, photography and painting, as this is the first time that paint has played a prominent role in any of my series.

Each image in this series was imagined as its own story and therefore the creative process was unique to each. Sometimes the painting was created to reflect the emotion of the individual and sometimes the individual was chosen to reflect the emotion of the painting. Lighting, texture and color were equally imperative in constructing the narrative, hence the diverse characteristics of each painting. But the most important element was the marriage of the individual to their surroundings.