Artist’s Statement
Since 1910, abstract imagery has been seen as the sole domain of painting by much of the art world. In fact, a number of eminent photographers—Paul Strand, Alfred Stieglitz, Man Ray, Brassaï—were making abstract photographs over a century ago; the first intentionally abstract photography was made in 1916—six years after the first abstract painting.
My photographs are of weathered surfaces, objects, graffiti, handbills, and paint found on walls, lampposts, and doors in the streets of Brooklyn, New York, Los Angeles, and Medellín among others.
In the process of photographing a surface or object and eliminating any reference to its physical context or size, it is abstracted and transformed into something that exists in an intangible realm of color, composition, shape, and mood. When printed, the image is transformed into a new physical form—a still photograph of a found object.
The French phrase objêt trouvé (found object) describes an object (or readymade product which is not normally considered material from which art is made) found by an artist, which with minimal modification is then presented as a work of art. I see my work in the Objêt Trouvé tradition that emerged in France and Germany after WW1 and the global pandemic. In post-war Germany, Kurt Schwitters asserted that common material, such as newsprint, wire mesh, and discarded fabric, were just as valid for the making of fine art as oil paint or marble. In France, Marcel Duchamp exhibited a porcelain urinal to challenge the French Academe’s arbitrary constraints on creativity. The Hungarian photographer Brassaï published photographs of graffiti he found in the streets of Paris in 1933; he described his graffiti images as ‘les objêts trouvé’. While I use a camera to make these images, I believe it is the final work that matters, not how it was made or whether it’s a painting, a collage, or a photograph. I photograph commonplace and consequently “invisible” surfaces as a means of exploring the alchemy of imagination.
I see a work of art as a conversation between the artist and the viewer. I have chosen to use neutral titles such as Concrete, Metal, or Wall with the intention to not distract or influence how or what a viewer sees or thinks about a given image. My photographs fall into two categories: Abstract or Narrative. An abstract is a window that invites you to enter and asks what you see or feel. A narrative tells a story and invites dialogue.
