"Hubbard's Takeover", 19" x 11 1/2" (27" x 20" Framed), Inkjet Print, 2009
"The Psychology of Losing", 23 5/8" x 31 1/2" Unframed/Framed, Inkjet Print, 2009
"The Man For the Job?", 15 3/4" x 10 3/4" (23 3/4" x 19 1/4" Framed), Inkjet Print, 2008
"Table of Contents - Yachting Magazine", 12 3/8" x 16 1/8" (20 3/8" x 24 5/8" Framed) Inkjet Print, 2009 
"The Right's Rabble Rouser", 15 3/4" x 10 3/4" (23 3/4" x 19 1/4" Framed), Inkjet Print, 2008Artist Statement
Photography struggles with the truth. It is a medium rooted in the scientific replication of objects through light and chemistry. On the one hand are philosophers like Jean Baudrillard and Roland Barthes who speak about the deceptive nature of photography. On the other, the thoughts of Susan Sontag, who believed that all photographs furnish evidence. Rather than be a concrete and truthful representation of actual objects, I accentuate and blur the border between reality and fiction with my work.
I construct realities and create documents that legitimize those fictional realities. I have worked in this manner for quite some time, beginning when my imagination guided my drawing and painting as a child. Now the stories and characters are more complex, with notions of political or religious ideologies looming beneath the surface of my work.
The comments that I make with my work are twofold: presenting fiction as reality draws attention to the ideas that the things we think of as familiar – institutions like politics, religion, or even the art world and gallery scene – are really constructions that can be changed at any time. The fiction of these institutions is neither a positive or negative; my calling attention to these ideas of simulation only serves to inform viewers that things are not as they seem.
It is in this same manner that my work comments on the fiction that surrounds photography as an art form. I believe that all photographs contain lies, constructed fiction, with which people fall in love. The catalogue of images surrounding things like politics and religion are largely iconographic and contain more symbolism than they do reality.
My most recent body of work, produced for my MFA thesis, compiles all of these ideas into a narrative following the recent presidential election. My fictional candidate exists in real time, dealing with the issues that the actual candidates had to deal with. In the fake documents that tell the story of John Hubbard, viewers see him rise to prominence as a third-party presidential candidate and fall from grace as he loses the election, breaks down and storms out of a television interview.
All the while, viewers question the reality of what they are seeing. In these questions lie the puzzles about photography and life itself. The work questions whether photography can capture accurate, truthful situations, or instead whether it lies to us by only simulating the reality we see. The work also questions the role of the media in politics, and how the media’s selectivity propels certain candidates forward while hindering others. At the forefront of the narrative is a story about a man who thinks he can accomplish the nearly impossible; he is fated to lose before he even steps into the ring, but his story is compelling nonetheless.
Photography struggles with the truth. It is a medium rooted in the scientific replication of objects through light and chemistry. On the one hand are philosophers like Jean Baudrillard and Roland Barthes who speak about the deceptive nature of photography. On the other, the thoughts of Susan Sontag, who believed that all photographs furnish evidence. Rather than be a concrete and truthful representation of actual objects, I accentuate and blur the border between reality and fiction with my work.
I construct realities and create documents that legitimize those fictional realities. I have worked in this manner for quite some time, beginning when my imagination guided my drawing and painting as a child. Now the stories and characters are more complex, with notions of political or religious ideologies looming beneath the surface of my work.
The comments that I make with my work are twofold: presenting fiction as reality draws attention to the ideas that the things we think of as familiar – institutions like politics, religion, or even the art world and gallery scene – are really constructions that can be changed at any time. The fiction of these institutions is neither a positive or negative; my calling attention to these ideas of simulation only serves to inform viewers that things are not as they seem.
It is in this same manner that my work comments on the fiction that surrounds photography as an art form. I believe that all photographs contain lies, constructed fiction, with which people fall in love. The catalogue of images surrounding things like politics and religion are largely iconographic and contain more symbolism than they do reality.
My most recent body of work, produced for my MFA thesis, compiles all of these ideas into a narrative following the recent presidential election. My fictional candidate exists in real time, dealing with the issues that the actual candidates had to deal with. In the fake documents that tell the story of John Hubbard, viewers see him rise to prominence as a third-party presidential candidate and fall from grace as he loses the election, breaks down and storms out of a television interview.
All the while, viewers question the reality of what they are seeing. In these questions lie the puzzles about photography and life itself. The work questions whether photography can capture accurate, truthful situations, or instead whether it lies to us by only simulating the reality we see. The work also questions the role of the media in politics, and how the media’s selectivity propels certain candidates forward while hindering others. At the forefront of the narrative is a story about a man who thinks he can accomplish the nearly impossible; he is fated to lose before he even steps into the ring, but his story is compelling nonetheless.
3 comments:
The story is brilliant and this is work that needs to be shown how the media can play with our minds and have us believe anything!
Rating 4
However, this work would be best shown as a series.... There are no real strong stand alones...
Perhaps there is too desire in these examples
"to get at the truth," to quote the photographer.
I sense, because of this objective, with the exception
of "Hubbard,s Takeover," these works portray a
rather strong journalistic quality. The esthetic vision.
except for that one, appears, non-existent.
SB 1
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