I create altered realities from found photographs, primarily late 19th - early 20th C portraiture. I am a collector of second hand images that contain a glimpse of our shared humanity and beg to be examined and explored.
My imagination is continuously lured by the mystery of these forgotten artifacts. The unsettling knowledge that most of my subjects are no longer living creates a heavy finality in their expressions and gestures. They possess a sad quietness, existing in an interesting sort of limbo—simultaneously trapped and saved within the photograph. I find myself feeling compassion for them.
By disjointing my subject from a superfluous identity, I aim to give her a voice that transcends the constraints of time and place.