Myths

Daughter of the Sun

This body of work explores the subjective and malleable nature of photography by digitally folding photographs, one over another, and combining multiple images to create one seamless, multidimensional, and subjective composition.

In the post-truth era, it’s only natural that photographs would become mutable, impressionistic, and object oriented. This work seeks to acknowledge photographs as objects entirely within the creative space rather than as documents of truth.

Storytelling
Complexity
Nuance
Perspective
Memory

Since it’s origin, photography has been viewed by the masses as a vehicle for truth, but to technicians and connoisseurs, the malleable nature of photographs has been apparent for just as long. The digital age has enabled a new, heightened level of manipulation which I seek to address with this body of work.

I believe that photographs function as rhizomes as defined by Deleuze and Guattari, “ceaselessly establishing connections between semiotic chains, organizations of power and circumstances relative to the arts, sciences and social struggles.” Photographs are a product of time and therefore are also subject to it’s changing and subjective nature.

Photographs are entering a new mode of possibility; no longer saddled by the burden of truth telling, photographs are free to entertain the suggestive, and evocative quality that painting enjoyed around the time of the invention of photography. This freedom should be exercised and understood through the use of many photographs at once. As a storytelling device, successive photographs are endowed with a narrative quality and can be used as a story telling device when seen in relation to one another.

The Origin of Strawberries

In searching for meaning in my work and life, I have often found friction between two strands of my ancestral heritage; one white (Irish) and the other Indigenous (Cherokee).

With this piece I seek to find meaning in the space between the two, rather than siding with one side over another. The Cherokee myth is illustrated using artworks from all over the world, but with a particular focus on European works.

My aim is not to whitewash or misappropriate the meaning of the legend, but to interrogate the complex nature of stories interwoven with strands of many disparate cultures. Both of these lineages live within me, and while I will always strive to see clearly the injustices done to both sides in the past, I will also seek to find the wisdom each has to offer.

A small selection of other pieces from this body of work.

Each piece exists as a 3D form, video and still images.