ARTIST STATEMENT

The last several years of personal discovery through a viewfinder has been a pure unexpected joy. I stumbled into shooting pictures, never imagining that I would eventually become a photographer. Observing the world with one eye shut has not only provided new ways to express personal creativity, but continuously challenges how I see the world, our impact on it, and vice versa. My architectural background directly influenced a meandering foray into the realm of photography, which is now inextricably linked to my interest in how we adapt to and shape our surroundings.

Photographic media has allowed exploration of subject matter both personally familiar and foreign. With a natural affinity for urban environments, the camera has become an evaluative tool of how we, as humans, strive towards a designed perfection. What we build is a push-and-pull dichotomy between how constructed elements relate and respond to its surrounding natural ecosystems and native urban environment. Further, how do we as individuals within society, unwittingly respond to and assimilate with our urban surroundings on a street level?

On the opposite end of the spectrum, I never imagined developing a romance for the rustic and imperfect quality of the agricultural landscape – of dilapidated barns, crop fields, and barbed wire. The weathered and eroded artifacts I discover during my travels reflect the simultaneous pride and melancholy of the rural condition in the United States. The last vestiges of a robust rural America, they are quickly disintegrating and returning to the earth of barren landscapes. I explore these environments, fully cognizant that twenty years from today the disappearing relics within my photographs will no longer exist.

Whether exploring self-referential urbanscapes, discovering embedded objects dotting rural plains, or tackling an entirely separate subject matter, photography has been a stunning journey of revelation. It is my staunch belief that we do not live in a vacuum and that our individual actions have a broad impact on others within our societies and environments. Photography has not only heightened this sensitivity – learning, absorbing, reflecting - but is the only thing which I can drown everything else out in life and purely focus on when and where I am.

The history of the human race is a perpetual story of perfecting our legacy, no matter how temporary or permanent the marker we leave behind. It is found in glistening glass towers that reflect only each other, barn remains resisting gravitational pull to its final return to dust, graffiti rebelling against society on the constrictive side of an abandoned warehouse, or simply the joy of a child playing in a water fountain. Though we continuously strive towards cultural and societal definitions of perfection, in overwhelming moments of place, history, and environment, we realize our transience and the inherent flaws in what we have created. As a photographer, I seek to explore these perceptions, intersections, and contradictions, sharing delight in the potential and potency of each beautiful imperfect moment.