Foreign Worlds Collection

About This Collection

Images from the 'Foreign Worlds' collection ask the viewer to imagine a place where identity and appearance are separate. Where appearances are dynamic and there is no connection between who someone is and how they look.

My creative process includes shaping real world environments for the dancers to explore and engage, making digital manipulation of my images unnecessary. All these images were created on set and in camera.

Creating this Collection

Engaging the viewer's imagination is one aspiration I have for my imagery. An artist using photography struggles against the viewer seeing the image as more that just a realistic representation of an actual moment. The natural inclination is for someone to look at a photograph and say it is this thing or that thing.

Designing the environment and staging the scene are two methods that help pull the viewer into the story. Altering a character's physical appearance by abstracting it is even better. Then the viewer has to use all the elements in the scene to create an interpretation.

During 2010 I spent months working at night creating the Winding Creek images. On July 19th, 2010, I formed these two images that were the seed for an idea. A way to abstract my characters on set.

During the intervening years I kept revisiting this original concept and expanding upon it. Finally, in August 2015 I took all those ideas and brought them to life with the help of some very talented dancers.

There were significant setbacks and failures while trying to achieve the feeling I was pursuing. But the experience of persevering through the many failures on the Winding Creek set, kept me trying new approaches. The images in this exhibit are the result of that process.