Statement - How to Look at Nature

        I go outside and I take photographs. Sometimes I take photographs of places that are outside outside. Other times I take photographs of places that simulate outside: natural history museums, research laboratories, nature conservatories. Nontraditional photographic tools, outdated modes of looking and capturing, become parameters that allow me to embrace the precarity inherent in ecological subjects that are both seen and envisioned. I strive to remain ever-conscious of my role as an observer through the work I create, catalyzing both the mundane and the mysteriously sublime aspects of the natural world that surrounds us.

        My work references the strange and storied history of nature photography by utilizing image-making artifacts that metamorphose the subjects within my images. My use of transformative lighting, campy lens filters, and blurry exposures further activates the subterranean strangeness of nature by undermining what typically constitutes a beautiful photograph. In addition to the photographic specimens I capture with my photography and video, I also utilize the sculptural methods of display often seen in natural history museums including light boxes and vinyl murals. 

        The work I create as a performer also investigates the questions I study through my photography and video. In these performances I personify ambiguous creatures adorned in sparkling scales and sequins, through which I can approach questions concerning environmental mysteries and crises as an interactive form of visual communication. To engage in monstrousness, to make oneself strange, is to engage with radical aspects of the natural world and the ecology of image-making. The specific display of my images along with my sculptures and performance series, work together to create a visually vacillating, complex ecosystem that engages a diverse spectrum of questions surrounding our human relationship with the natural world.