Incongrous

The work began with a question: What happens when a private self becomes visible in public?

For much of my life, the self represented in these photographs existed privately. The series emerged from the need to give that self a physical presence, to move beyond imagination and occupy space without explanation or permission. The photographs are not records of a fully resolved identity. They follow identity as it is tested, performed, exposed, and gradually inhabited.

I make the images largely alone. I search for a location, compose the frame, position the camera, and then enter the scene. This collapses the usual relationships within portraiture: I am simultaneously photographer, sitter, director, and witness. Once I step in front of the camera, however, control becomes uncertain. I must remain visible to the setting, to passersby, and to whatever occurs while the shutter is open. Each photograph is therefore both a constructed portrait and the evidence of an actual public act.

I am interested in the friction between vulnerability and composure. The body I present is not the youthful, perfected body traditionally granted the status of an art nude, nor one that contemporary culture reliably treats as socially ideal. Its age, sex, presentation, clothing, and surroundings can produce uncertainty or discomfort. Yet I do not regard the figure as misplaced. The incongruity lies partly in the expectations brought to it.

I want viewers to become aware of their own looking. What do they believe they are seeing? At what point does observation become judgment? What makes this body appear beautiful, comic, vulnerable, sexual, inappropriate, or out of place? The photographs do not prescribe the correct response. They create enough ambiguity for viewers to encounter their reactions openly and consider what those reactions reveal.

The environment is an active participant in each portrait. Railings divide and frame the body; glass shelters expose and reflect it; benches and discarded furniture create temporary domestic spaces; signs and buildings alternately shelter, dwarf, or announce the figure. These structures influence how the body can be seen and how it understands itself.

Across the series, the figure shifts between concealment and display. At times I appear tentative, isolated, or physically small. Elsewhere I recline, walk forward, or meet the camera directly. The feminine clothing is neither disguise nor costume. It is one of the means through which I recognize and construct myself.

Self-portraiture allows me to inhabit contradictions without resolving them: discomfort and pleasure, masculinity and femininity, theatricality and ordinary life, control and risk. Ultimately, Incongruous is about becoming visible to myself and claiming space within the photograph, within the city, and within my own life.

Selected Portfolio

A series of ten photographic works submitted for consideration for the Arnold Newman Prize for New Directions in Photographic Portraiture.