noun: a play or part of a play with speaking roles
for only two actors
2017 - ongoing
I love to wander the streets and observe people. My series, Duologues, records fragments of these encounters. It is a play between two images creating meanings belonging to neither— a discovery process each viewer interprets differently. Reminiscent of the idea of synchronicity, an idea that describes meaningful coincidences, my pairings intentionally produce uncanny relationships.
Shooting intuitively and spontaneously, my eyes lock onto the unusual, the outstanding, and even the mundane. Frequently, dramatic lighting shapes the photographs. I collect the unrelated pieces like stems in a wildflower field - disconnected, yet bound together by their place of origin. The visuals seem familiar but particulars will distinguish them from the common.
I match the images by playing a game of Memory: finding in each image shapes, gestures, and symbols that rhyme. The rhyming may occur within the major elements in the image, such as the subject, or in minute details that otherwise might go unnoticed. By pairing two photos that occurred at different moments in time, the story that emerges can bring them together. The final sequence feels deeply connected, even though the encounters on the street were random.
noun: a gradual decrease in speed
2021 - ongoing
As I observe the pedestrian continuum passing by me, I recall a line from Hermann Hesse’s *Siddhartha*: “Nothing was, nothing will be, everything has reality and presence.”
My photography project Rallentando is about peripheral perception and memory unfolding through serendipitous encounters on a city street. Subjects move in and out of focus as the lens glimpses upon a downward gaze, a hand carrying a cake, a lock of curly hair, portraits of everyday passersby.
I sequence these images—captured in different stages of clarity—to reveal the visual landscape of the city street as systematic collections of impressions, and arrange them into grids according to color palettes created by monotone, urban backdrops (red brick wall, green construction fence, a yellow window display). Backgrounds permeate and unite subjects, reminding us that we are more alike than different, and that individual moments or experiences are components of a larger reality where only the present exists.
Akin to Hannah Arendt's concept of plurality–the notion that the presence of others is what makes action meaningful–street photography, through its focus on candid moments in public spaces, suggests the distinctiveness of individuals within the shared reality of a communal space. Rallentando points towards the richness of human beauty and the spontaneous expression of individual freedom in public life.