| IN THE PRESENT ABSENCE

PHOTOGRAPHIC SERIES

This ongoing series of self-portraits, in which the subject recedes or vanishes, explores ideas of impermanence, and the nature of authorship.

“In a certain light, and at certain times of day or night, the streets become a heightened environment… a kind of dreamscape, or stage set. That’s when these images are captured, in the gaps between traffic and pedestrians crossing, when the city seems to lose its awareness and purpose, and my own process becomes more automatic and instinctive.”

Don't You Wish You Were On The Other Side of The Glass is a collection of photographs of the witnessing self, taken over a two year period in London and Los Angeles (video below).

"I wanted this series of pictures to act as bridge between street photography and self portraiture.

For many of the images, I’m looking for ways to block or erase parts of my face and body because I want to move away from conventional self-portraiture as much as possible, and because I’m interested in the transformation of the self, and how to communicate that visually. The window surface, and how light strikes it, is key to this, and so the texture of the glass is important — how clean or weathered it is, or whether it’s been graffitied on.

In other images, while there's usually some distortion of the face or figure — even the appearance of amputation in some cases — it’s more about the space, and where the subject stands in it. That tells us something else about the figure — how present or distant it is. Reflecting the street into the area behind the window creates a liminal space, and the entire image becomes the subject. I think of these photographs as containing a figure, not self-portraits that makes the figure the subject.”