I am a collector. Photography provides me the ability to suspend objects, bodies, time and space. It is a way to collect the transient, intangible fragments of life and to turn them into physical objects—talismans—to be carried around, looked at, torn up, and owned.
“Here are my teeth: Black with stars” is a space where impulses must be followed. Impulses that have led to a cycle of looking, unpacking, trying to forget and making objects for reasons I can’t always define. This compilation of fragmented thought and experience is at once how I allow you into my world, and how I keep my mortality at bay —my attempt to deal with the violence and wonder of my perishability.
My body has become a stage to further explore themes of death and mortality as a type of stasis. A series of constructed gestures are intermingled with straightforward observations. There is a unique tension that arises from the conflation of an impassive image with a body in transition, not quite asleep and unknowing, yet not fully participatory. It is not just a passive or active body, it is a body that is having things done to it. Violence is a subtle undercurrent to the work and manifests itself in the use of masking and obfuscation.
My photographs are both a testament to and a defense against mortality. I am a collector in constant dread and anticipation of the next moment, trying to suppress the reality that my collection will outlive me.
