Plaza of the Americas is an investigation of cultural spectacle and simulacra. Representing the new and old America, my photographs embody anachronistic and repetitive Americana, relics from our collective past. In reality and in my work, that past is repetitive, never fully past, but always recurring here and now. Time is the central thread of my work, upending the belief that photography reliably captures only the present moment in some fundamental way. My photographs reveal the endurance of the fetishized past and point to the romantic grasp of nostalgia, both embedded in US culture. Supposedly better than our present moment, nostalgia, much like the longing for progress, reveals our desire for an improved present that is always in some sense lacking. While my photographs are decidedly contemporary, they are equally anachronistic, a reflection of our culture that contains within it the past that will also be its future.
The visual equivalent of Ferlinghetti’s “a kind of Coney Island of the mind, a kind of circus of the soul,” my work is an investigation of a multifarious culture united under the banner of intemperance in the face of persistent deprivation. Traversing carnival, boardwalk, beach, and festival, I explore the artificial environment we buy and sell. My aesthetic is an explosive color that mimics the circus and visibly captures the past in the present moment. I do not stage scenes or engage actors, instead preferring the approach of the street photographer. In spite of these flashy excesses, the subjects of my photographs are stuck no place in particular, within a simulated, image-saturated landscape that is our modern bread and circus.
The visual equivalent of Ferlinghetti’s “a kind of Coney Island of the mind, a kind of circus of the soul,” my work is an investigation of a multifarious culture united under the banner of intemperance in the face of persistent deprivation. Traversing carnival, boardwalk, beach, and festival, I explore the artificial environment we buy and sell. My aesthetic is an explosive color that mimics the circus and visibly captures the past in the present moment. I do not stage scenes or engage actors, instead preferring the approach of the street photographer. In spite of these flashy excesses, the subjects of my photographs are stuck no place in particular, within a simulated, image-saturated landscape that is our modern bread and circus.