Recently seeking to explore notions of space – as opposed to place – further, I turned to the role of perception in understanding a space. Inspired by artist Roni Horn’s desire to “make being here enough” and challenged by philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s observations on the role of bodily movement in physical space, I was particularly interested in the ways in which perception serves as a synthesis of presence and context. With this in mind, I created a system for experiencing and capturing domestic spaces.
The resulting project, A Building In Which…, is a collection of black and white inkjet prints, each a digital composite of ten photographs of a room in a house. During house visits, I spent a set amount of time in each room. The majority of which was spent merely being present in the room: sitting, looking, perceiving, responding, and reacting. The final minute in the room is spent photographing the first ten objects, angles, textures, etc. that demanded my attention. Due to the short period of time reserved for photographing, the project relies on notions of automatism and instinct to capture the room. As a result, the ten photographs are dependent upon that singular experience, as a re-visit to the same room at another time would most likely produce ten different images. Ultimately, they combine my own “bodily experience” with the narrative of the house as well as the narrative of its residents; thus, producing a unique, intertwined history.
Through the course of this project, I shot five different houses resulting in over fifty different images.
Installations: BlackRock Center for the Arts (2011) / DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities (2012)