My most recent work started with the expectation that a photograph functions as an indexical sign of an actual event, but ended up demonstrating that “knowing” anything is a creative construction. In order for a photograph to index reality it must function as a representation.  For the camera to represent reality there has to be a separation between that reality and the camera. The camera must stand apart in order to represent reality, or what has been. Photography was there, and yet it still registers as a sign among signs. We see signifiers of reality, not reality itself. But to see a signifier of reality means that we are separate from reality, and that we might currently be seeing the “wrong” reality.

If photography does not reference “reality” is it still interesting? If we separate out "reality” as something we could figure out—if we can see it through signifiers, or representations of it—are we doomed to postmodern dislocation and pastiche? Dislocation assumes a real or true place that we no longer have access to. Pastiche assumes a reality or a true object, of which we are only seeing a send-up. Instead of lamenting this unbearable break with reality, forced to live in a send-up, we could accept a creatively constructed reality, one we constantly weave for ourselves from the signs and discourses around us. Instead of being distanced from reality, this enables us to creatively interact with and construct our world, to accept all kinds of possibilities as true. I find this idea empowering, playful and full of possibility. My search for the correct "reality" can be replaced with a deep exploration with what is.