Hanging Landscapes
2022

Artist Statement

Imagine walking into a crime scene and wanting to take a picture.

I chose to engage the question of whether a photographer creates beauty or captures it. You see a chronology of painting occur.

This chronology begins with that most ambiguous: Landscape photography. We have carved ourselves into our environment, so the subject is susceptible to interpretation. And I composed a picture and made this my own. If photography is painting with light than the artistic excisions guided by a sense are at least corrosive enough to leave a footprint connecting the souvenir to the environment. I mounted my landscape photographs on metal that I then hung.

Then I repeated this line of thought, but through a more graphic crime. I projected paint through the installation and photographed the act. If you walk into the crime scene, you can see the aftermath of the violence, and the moment of imposition at the same time. As you can always see in any photograph.

We always project the moment of violence through the victim of it. Furthermore, we do so and successfully create a clean sculpted story. So back to the question of whether photographers create or capture beauty.

The answer is definitely not both. The ambiguity between these two realities is a tool in the hands of the photographers. Frustratingly, they own the question responsible for their own interrogation. Obviously, answering the question would be the best way to quantize their roll, but falling short of an answer, the best we can do is observe the violence they portray.