Artist Statement
My photographic work seeks to investigate the self and personality through experience and emotion. An integral intention of this work is the exploration of the psychology of the family structure and how it affects each member, each person in the world. I am showing my experience as a person who is asking questions about family history, personality, and interpersonal relationships. I am thinking about how each person's personality is formed, based on what has happened to them and what feelings they have had in their own lives. I am able to begin to explore these issues by using my own experience as an example, taking self-portraits and photographs of objects or scenes that are psychologically charged for me. I revisit the houses I grew up in, taking a much closer look at rooms and objects I have seen thousands of times before. These are things that have become institutions in my mind and memory, yet I try to analyze them with a different intention. Coming back and seeing the staples of my old life, now either frozen in time, exactly the way they were, or totally destroyed and changed, causes me to reflect upon the changes that I myself have undergone, or the lack thereof. Sifting through my parents possessions and documents, as well as my own, I am discovering them as if I had never seen them before, trying to unlock some kind of meaning from them, as if each individual object is a piece to discovering who we all are. By sharing my own very personal feelings and situations, I hope that the viewer can connect to the experience and see a part of him or herself there.