Michael and Casey, Palm Springs, California (Home is where one begins),
archival inkjet print, 30" x 20", 2014
archival inkjet print, 30" x 20", 2014
David, Boonville, California (Home is where one begins),
archival inkjet print, 18" x 12", 2012
archival inkjet print, 18" x 12", 2012
Hawk, San Jose, California (Home is where one begins),
archival inkjet print, 30" x 20", 2012
archival inkjet print, 30" x 20", 2012
Ed, San Francisco, California (Home is where one begins),
archival inkjet print, 18" x 12", 2013
archival inkjet print, 18" x 12", 2013
Matt and Jimmy, Boonville, California (Home is where one begins),
archival inkjet print, 18" x 12", 2018
archival inkjet print, 18" x 12", 2018
The formal and conceptual arc of my work is rooted in a tension between the public and private domains of identity through its formation, performance, and perception in society. Working in photography, installation, collaborative public interventions, and design, I explore the visual and material signifiers of queerness, masculinity, class, ethnicity—and their intersections—through abstract and straightforward documentary representation.
Home is where one begins is a documentary portrait series that examines gay men and the ways in which the domestic, personal spaces they claim and inhabit become physical extensions of their selves and how they are each shaped by these spaces. On the surface, these men embody traditional notions of masculinity, domesticity, and the American Dream in a private space guarded from public view. However, the portraits reveal where, in the reality of their domestic lives, a queering of space occurs: a red jock strap, a Wicked Witch of the West figurine, matching Tiffany-blue bow ties, the intimacy of a touch. Home is where one begins draws from the aesthetics of cinematic framing and a Northern European painting tradition that focuses on the value of the quotidian and its attention to detail of every object, surface, and texture within pictorial space. Within the photographic frame, the home becomes a kind of domestic stage: each man a player in a sublime drama of the mundane and transgressive.
Home is where one begins is a documentary portrait series that examines gay men and the ways in which the domestic, personal spaces they claim and inhabit become physical extensions of their selves and how they are each shaped by these spaces. On the surface, these men embody traditional notions of masculinity, domesticity, and the American Dream in a private space guarded from public view. However, the portraits reveal where, in the reality of their domestic lives, a queering of space occurs: a red jock strap, a Wicked Witch of the West figurine, matching Tiffany-blue bow ties, the intimacy of a touch. Home is where one begins draws from the aesthetics of cinematic framing and a Northern European painting tradition that focuses on the value of the quotidian and its attention to detail of every object, surface, and texture within pictorial space. Within the photographic frame, the home becomes a kind of domestic stage: each man a player in a sublime drama of the mundane and transgressive.