Interiors Series

The interiors Series

I love stories – from others, from fiction, from the news, from poetry, from memories – I imagine the desperate situations of personal relationship as scenes of tragic disasters. I enjoy the way in which words placed next to one another elicit an image. The way an image can conjure up an entire story. In this series of photographs, I strive to create a narrative that delivers the viewer into a place where a story of humanness can be contemplated.

I design and construct interior room dioramas that show an aftermath of a destructive event. The domestic spaces illustrate one fragment of a larger narrative, depicting stories of frustration and loss, implying a connection to personal relationships through titling. By positioning the viewer separate from the event through doorways, hallways and adjoining rooms, the viewer becomes the voyeur, the eavesdropper the silent observer.

The disasters depicted in the images; a room overflowing with crumpled paper, bricked up passageways, oceans of sand and car headlights on an abandoned mattress allude to past events, and the potential of events awaiting us in our future. These spaces have a constructed history that is manufactured in order to tell a story of human feelings and experiences. I titled these images with a line from a story that I feel can be interpreted on different levels and directs the viewer in the image while allowing room for personal interpretation.

After constructing these sets, I then photograph them using a 4x5 camera and print the images, using traditional color printing methods, to a final size of 24 x 30 inches. The images are matted and displayed in 33 x 38’ white maple shadow box frames. All images in this series were created between 2005 and 2009.

We thought it would last forever

The neighbors began to speculate

It was something they came to accept

The expectation continued to remain

Against our better judgement, we simply watched

It was unexplainable to others