FINE ART PHOTOGRAPHY: SELECT WORKS
AMERICAN DREAM
This work created in collaboration with Jeff Williams blends together actual events, memory, humor, cultural and historical references. Our work reflects on both conveying an experience, and a longing to deconstruct how memory functions, both individually and collectively as a culture.
Our latest series of photographs is titled “American Dream.” In this ongoing body of work we create highly detailed sculptures made from mostly recycled and found materials. We light these miniature scenes with a variety of continuous light sources and photograph with a high-resolution large format scanning back camera, producing highly detailed large photographs. The final prints are true to the scenes we create, we do not digitally alter or add anything in post-production other than color balance and exposure. In this aspect, we are deeply influenced by modernist and documentary photographers of the 20th century. A merging of personal experience, dreams and an “on the road” documentation of American culture inspired these miniaturized illustrations.
Learning to compromise through collaboration is both challenging and exciting; merging creatively is complex but mostly rewarding. We view the American Experience very differently. I was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, am multilingual and multicultural. Jeff is from Memphis, TN. He is a sculptor and potter, as well as a photographer. We are both fascinated by how photojournalism has defined, or attempts to define, history. The blending of photography, sculpture, and drawing to form a new documentation compels us both forward.
Our latest series of photographs is titled “American Dream.” In this ongoing body of work we create highly detailed sculptures made from mostly recycled and found materials. We light these miniature scenes with a variety of continuous light sources and photograph with a high-resolution large format scanning back camera, producing highly detailed large photographs. The final prints are true to the scenes we create, we do not digitally alter or add anything in post-production other than color balance and exposure. In this aspect, we are deeply influenced by modernist and documentary photographers of the 20th century. A merging of personal experience, dreams and an “on the road” documentation of American culture inspired these miniaturized illustrations.
Learning to compromise through collaboration is both challenging and exciting; merging creatively is complex but mostly rewarding. We view the American Experience very differently. I was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, am multilingual and multicultural. Jeff is from Memphis, TN. He is a sculptor and potter, as well as a photographer. We are both fascinated by how photojournalism has defined, or attempts to define, history. The blending of photography, sculpture, and drawing to form a new documentation compels us both forward.
MAKING THE DREAM
The images above highlight the process of making the series American Dream.
SMALL WORLD
This body of work was theoretically grounded in the work of Jean Baudrillard. In his book Simulacra and Simulation (1981) he argued that through production and reproduction images reflect a profound reality, then masks said reality until any relation to reality is completely lost and becomes its own simulacrum. Simulacra is a system where cultural products resemble reality to reflect consumers whose lives are largely artificial, therefore references of reality are expected to be presented in artificial, "hyperreal" terms.
The images captured in this series demonstrate the progression of spaces that were created as a simulation of countries and cultures, and evolved into their own simulacrum through reproduction.
The images captured in this series demonstrate the progression of spaces that were created as a simulation of countries and cultures, and evolved into their own simulacrum through reproduction.
WELL DONE
(WORK IN PROGRESS)
This series is part of a large study being conducted in collaboration with Jeff Williams. In this work we explore the emotional aspects of living within 2 miles of gas wells. These images were taken in the surrounding areas of Fort Worth, TX. The process known as horizontal drilling, hydraulic fracturing, or fracking entails industrial drilling for the purpose of natural gas extraction. Horizontal drilling entails the use of industrial toxic chemicals to exterminate biological life that can quickly clog the gas extraction pipes deep underground. Horizontal drilling has surfaced across towns in the united states approximately ten years ago expanding into heavily populated urban areas along the way. While scientists are exploring the tangible facts of the gas extraction process as a whole, sociological and psychological effects of living near fracking have yet to be explored. This work is part of a video documentary as well as an auto-ethnographic study that sets out to capture the voiceless citizens that have been negatively affected by living within a two mile radius or less of hydraulic fracturing before, during, and after that entire drilling process. Many scholars have published findings about public safety, health, and environmental concerns. Movies such as Gasland 1 and 2 have offered evidence that many oil and gas companies are lobbying our elected officials in order to maintain the upper hand in parts of the country that have shale plays.
