Fine Art nominee

This series of images, Ad Astra (to the stars), originally taken in an ancient Japanese graveyard, have been manipulated and transformed into an other-worldly state: a ghostly dimensionality that embodies the evanescent distinction between life and death.

In a world where everyone has a phone in their hand, extensively documenting their lives, who, then, is the photographer? How can the notion of the exceptional, singular image, the Ansel Adams, or Cartier-Bresson point of view, be sustained when we are bombarded with a steady stream of imagery each day, from the moment we open our eyes?

As I see it, my role as an artist is to ask questions. To pose questions in my work that engage the viewer, rather than promote an facile representational reality. Historically, photographs are two dimensional embodiments of three dimensional objects in space. My images address the notion of reality and perception: the investigation of what visual anomalies occur when such three dimensional objects are reduced, fractured, twisted, or repeated and then reconstructed in incongruous ways in order to promote an uneasy engagement with those who view them.

My work is strongly influenced by artists such as Dimitri Malevich, Joseph Albers, Agnes Martin, and Chuck Close, to name a few.

In the few months since I have been promoting my work, I have won Gold, Bronze and an honorable mention in the 2016 TIFA competition and accepted as winner in "Boundaries and Balance."