THE SPACE LEFT BEHIND

When I was little, I would study family photographs to see what I could divine.  Even at that early age, I wondered how the people we live alongside shape us, and how the past leaves marks on our lives.  In my ongoing project The Space Left Behind, I explore my sense of place by transforming natural materials into a physical manifestation of home. I arrange leaves, flowers, and soil on photographic paper in my darkroom. Then, I move the materials under candle light, allowing the covered areas to remain untouched while exposing the area around them. The resulting one-of-a-kind print is a striking, reverse silhouette that bears only a loose formal relationship to the material it has recorded, allowing me to see the exquisite natural beauty hidden in the everyday world around me with a renewed sense of wonder. 

Through this work, I counter the commonly held idea that a photograph is a pale representation of reality, wherein something necessary is lost rather than gained. Formally, my photograms bear no resemblance to anything but themselves. My working strategy removes colors, texture, and detail from my source material, creating new shapes and patterns that trigger our imagination. I consider the here and now by limiting my ephemera to a single vantage point and moment in time. Living and dead plants are rendered indistinguishable, inviting us to find beauty in both life and death and the natural world around us. The Space Left Behind engages both how we are shaped by and how we might reshape the people and place we call home.