200540" x 32"Archival pigment print
The subject is dwarfed by stacks of books rising in tandem with the trees. "Bird Sounds", "Energy Conversion", "2nd Year Latin"; all will eventually be absorbed. See the making of this work.
My constructed-narrative photographs are nonlinear short stories. They focus on bizarrely adventurous young girls populating beautiful but uneasy worlds. To create these images, I draw from childhood fantasies and memories, then construct life-sized environments. By pushing these scenarios to an extreme conclusion, the girls become metaphors for our hyper-real childhood selves, where remembered emotions become stronger through time.
I’ve been asked why I go to such lengths - that is, why not simply photoshop an image together? Why travel to the woods to build a bedroom, or build a full split-level set? My reason hinges on how integral the building process becomes. Because these sets are so elaborate, the idea is concretely conceived before any construction begins. But through the building process elements evolve in ways I’d never have planned. Accidental details take on a meaning of their own; new connections between objects can’t help but emerge when standing in an open bedroom in a darkening spring forest.