Have you always taken photographs like these?
It is a question I have been asked a few times—at exhibitions, and again after being introduced as a SLAP alumnus.
Photography had long been a hobby of mine. This way of seeing was one of many possibilities I had carried with me through those years, and I had thought of my work as bringing one of them into form.
But the word “always” stayed with me. Does the fact that I once made similar photographs mean that this was always the kind of work I was making?
I was looking at this even then. I just did not yet know what kind of story I could tell through that way of seeing.
Relationships was a body of work in which instinct and judgment came before explanation. Before I could fully put into words why I was choosing these particular scenes and forms, the work had already begun to take shape.
After the hectic process of preparing the exhibition and making the dummy book, I began to ask myself again why the work had to take this form. Looking back on that process, I eventually came to understand that this was the form that best expressed my own story.
Expression came first; understanding followed.
The work that came afterward began from that understanding. What I discovered by looking back at Relationships has carried into Encounters and the work that will follow.
Something in me moves toward something first, and I follow it, trying to understand it and give it form. Even when I cannot fully explain in words what draws me there, I can express it through images.
Photography is a way of seeing. Everything I have seen, experienced, and thought about has shaped the way I see today. Through making work, I come to understand how those experiences remain within me.
I still do not know exactly when “always” began. But I make photographs from the life I have lived, and through what I make, I come to understand myself. From the self I come to know through that process, the next work begins.