We live in a cloud of noise with input and stimuli coming from all directions all the time. We have more tools, gadgets, and access to information than ever before. Technology holds the promise of a happier, easier life, yet somehow I’m busier. I have more to do. I have this sense that the same technology which is connecting me to the world, is also disconnecting me.
The idea of simply taking some space to think for ourselves, without outside influence, is becoming more and more difficult. Self awareness, and the ability to take a moment to reflect and consider, is becoming an endangered resource.
This work is a push back against the inertia of a nonstop lifestyle. Not to rebel against technology, but to exact a more conscious relationship with it.
I went into the streets with my camera to catch people thinking and highlight it as the central theme of each piece. We don’t know what they are thinking about. My goal was to catch them lost in thought. All of the central photos were taken in my travels in Western Europe, Canada and the United States.
Each work consists of two pieces of plexiglass suspended on the wall with 1/2” of space between them. The white shapes on the back piece of plexi are hand painted or sprayed. The front piece is a simulated multiple exposure of as many as twelve different photographs masked into a hand drawn or hand splattered shape, and then printed directly on the plexiglass. The two shapes together symbolize the frenetic chaos of our lives, and the central photograph with the space between the two pieces of glass represent the space each subject is creating away from their surrounding lives.
We are looking in through the cloud of noise at a person having a private moment in public, peering in at an intimate moment. No matter how monumental or mundane that moment may be.