Featured in Muhlenberg College's 2015 Senior Thesis Exhibition
Artist Statement:
One of my goals as a photographer is to make the viewer actively question what they are seeing. With the Holga, a plastic camera that uses medium format film, I am able to work towards this goal by creating dreamlike photographs. While digital cameras aim for sharpness and replication of reality, Holgas produce images that are fuzzy and even abstracted; this greatly reduces the ability to predict how the final image will appear. The subject of my photos is the environment – landscapes, non-human species, and examples of human presence in nature. These topics are ever-present in today’s society, but my images are not necessarily meant to be inflammatory. Rather, they serve to start a conversation about one’s own connection to their natural surroundings. Similar to Josef Sudek, who used light, glass, and condensation to distort his photographs, my work aims to reveal an unseen or unnoticed perspective of reality. By warping what we see around us, the Holga prompts the viewer to engage with the photograph on an intimate and intellectual level. I consider my work to be in the realm of environmental art, as I have gained inspiration from other environmental artists such as Asher Jay and Sebastião Salgado. However, as my work has evolved, I have realized that each viewer will perceive my environmental depictions in different ways, and therefore it is the viewers’ responsibility to confront their own opinions about the environment.
