All my art, writing, poetry, photography, anything, all links up into one idea that either dominates your life or is completely insignificant in it: the desperation not to be ordinary in your work. To break some kind of ceiling, shatter the glass, leave a mark, do something that’s never been done before and get something you’ve never completely had before. A lot of artists do this, and so many of them even go about it the same way, and somehow the work is never the same. Cindy Sherman was probably the biggest influence on this entire thing, she broke everything, everything about feminism and the industry of art, and the way we enjoy our film noir and our romantic, sophisticated outings to the MMoA. I, very much like her, never want to make anything that someone could feel entirely comfortable hanging above their sofa or reading to their children at night. Things like that don't push the envelope at all, and most of us have moved past bedtime stories, anyway.
“Life imitates art far more than art imitates life.” - Oscar Wilde
Her face is almost completely obscured, with only her nose and the shadow of her left eye visible to the viewer. The photo has no clear story, it could be that she's some sort of monster or specter, or someone illuminated, haunted. It's completely up to the viewer to determine, it gives them the all the power to decide why she's crawling, to where, or if she's actually even crawling at all. (f/22, 18mm, ISO 100)
Something else that I hope has a mood you can't quite pin down. I like that she's looking out of the frame, but that her body faces the camera head-on, which is powerful posture. This and the fact that she is off-centered, positioned more the left, created the composition I was after. (f/22, 18mm, ISO 100)
This and the photo above are both photographs of my sister where I strove for the film-noir vibe. Because of the different post-production work on each image, they ended up as two very different objects. The preceding image touches something much more contemplative, the story of some kind of heroine, something intentional. Our subject here appears not to be acting as she is for anything other than sheer enjoyment, or contentedness. Her face looks peaceful, but she's translucent. I wanted her to seem private, I wanted there to be voyeurism in the photo. I wanted anyone who didn't feel like they were intruding by looking to be looking at it wrong. (f/22, 18mm, ISO 100)
Everything here is either obvious or I think is best left up to the spectator. (f/22, 38mm, ISO 100)
This is not a posed photo. This is something that actually took place in my sister's bedroom, between her, our two best friends, me (kind of), and my partner. The thing that I find most compelling isn't just the fact that rarely do we feed our friend out of little glass bottles, but that she's looking directly at her (in the bottom left-corner), and she's watching in an almost tense way, waiting. That can be so many things. (f/5.6, 55mm, ISO 6400)
This was important to me because of the oddity of it. The fact that it has no story, no reason to be happening, and the expression is so bold and jaunty, almost mischievous. It's matter-of-fact in a way. (f/5.6, 18mm, ISO 400)
