Back when I was in university I remember we studied ideas of images and concepts behind truth in images, especially when looking at the constructed image vs the “candid shot” We would look at things like how simply taking a photograph by framing the shot in the viewfinder is a way of excluding information, a way of controlling the reality that you present.

Photography is almost always presenting something subjective. Something contrived, it is really almost impossible to remove the hand of the artist from the resulting work you present to your audience.

Working in commercial photography for years as well, I became quite adept at presenting a facade of reality, we built sets in studios to look like interiors, designed lighting set ups to look like daylight coming through he window. So much of what I did in photography was not real. So it made me a lot less precious about the idea of what exactly makes an image real.

Coming over to AI meant a liberation from the limitations of production more than anything. It meant an erosion of the borders between possible and impossible. Given a large enough budget and long enough time frame almost anything is possible in photography. This is not true when working with AI, the limitations are in your imagination, your ability to prompt what you want, and your willingness to create like a collaborator more than a dictator.

I find myself often dwelling on these concepts, memory, loss and the human condition. They are the things that scare me, the things that touch me emotionally and they are generally something that I think we can all find common ground in. I cover it off in my work because it is something that I can be honest in my desire to explore. I dont look at these things because I think it is what others want to see, I do it because its what I want to see. Barthes and Lynch both have great influence over how I work, or at least how I understand how to work with these ideas. I consider them influences because their teachings give me to the tools to conceptualise these kinds of projects. Barthes taught me via “Camera Lucida” about the impact that an image can have, describing the “punctum” an accidental element that cuts through and anchors to our memory. His work leads me always to strive to impart the third meaning to my work. Something which transcends the obvious, and the symbolic to create something that lingers in the mind about the work.

The work of Lynch stands to me as a testament to why it is important to leave room for the viewer to bring themselves to your work. Bring their own ideas and their own experiences/memories. By doing this it means that they can derive their own readings of the work, they can take that work and discuss it with one another, and so long as I as the artist remember to leave them room to do this, then I shouldn’t introduce a canon to the work that might invalidate their readings.

Throughout each of these worlds there is one thread that connects them all and that is truth. Not truth as in factual truth but instead the concept of truth, the concept of reality itself, as seen through images pulled from latent space.

HELIUM talks about the fragility of youth and the nature of identity within group settings as told through the aesthetic lens of event/party photography. BAPTISM tells a story of a fictional event, as told through the lens of photojournalism and war photography. VOYEUR is about the human condition, and seeing people and their emotions in a vulnerable state as told through the aesthetic of cinematic stills. The idea of truth as it stands through these fictional photographs is that we are seeing performances without actors, likenesses without origin, people that exist in this flickering moment and none other, their very existence is a question of the truth of images in a post AI world.

I think that there is some benefit to being early, but truthfully there is an obsession and dedication that can be seen in some other AI artists. People like Delta Sauce, Claire Silver, Frank Manzano, Chikai, Noper. These are artists who are obsessed with pushing the boundaries, sure, but more importantly they are artists who are able to bring themselves out through their work. I think being an original voice means capitalising on the only original thing that you have. Your lived experience, your personal feelings. Your memories. Your Taste. You. I think if you choose to become the king of one aesthetic, then you can be dethroned by the next person who is just as good or better. If you chase after aesthetics alone then you will always be behind the curve. If instead you use the medium to give life to something that exists only within you and then share that with the world. If you are persistent and you aren’t afraid of trying over and over. Eventually people will take notice.

Throughout this work I wanted to create these video loops to not exactly be stress inducing (although some are) I wanted them instead to reflect the ways that stress can be interruptive to normal functions. So I took the footage of them and I cut them up and spliced them and interjected them and beat mapped them and caused all sorts of chaos in their function. To be implicit of the way that stress can cause chaos in the function of the body.

Animals are representative of a type of purity, to some extent. It is even biblical to say that the way humans exist is with a kind of morality. A contrivance that is against nature. We have an ability to put limits on ourselves that have societal benefits, these probably contributed to the kind of success we have at achieving complicated things as a whole species. These limits though create stress. I represent stress in humans through the animals as well. There are some that are indicative of what is being brought out by the stress, a fight or flight response or agitation.

It’s not fair to say that stress in animals is uncomplicated, ofcourse there can be many reasons for stress in animals, but for symbolic purposes I felt it was a good way to describe this difference between the natural order and the contrivances of modern day humanity.

This choice for minimalism, isolation. Was inspired by the works of Olivier Toscani and by Richard Avedon. Toscani for presenting things which are societally controversial in the same way you would present an advertising campaign, and Richard Avedon for showing people in this isolated way. By producing work in this white space, it gives you no choice to look away. There is no distraction, instead you have only the figure of the subject. This magnifies their expressions, their performance, and it places these into a symbolic space, no longer intended as a representation of something real instead it is a representation of something else.

I think we are living in a 24 hour world completely now. It used to be that you would get your newspaper in the morning, listen to the radio on the drive to work, and watch television in the evening. This would be how the monoculture of media was served to the masses for its news and entertainment. Sure there were alternatives but for the most part people were geographically attuned to the same world. Social networks have changed a lot of how things work, especially in the way they have been algorithmically attuned to be stress inducing. If you don’t set your own limits and boundaries for its influence on your life then you can very likely find yourself at the mercy of the algorithm.

For me I do see art as a way of expressing at least my own complicated feelings about these things. There is a lot of my own very personal feelings in here but I think there is plenty of room for others to find themselves in it as well. I think that self-therapy in art is a good starting point, this is something I live with, anxiety and stress and exhaustion from this weird world we have created.

I think this body of work is more about questions than it is about answers. I want people to find their own truth in each of these loops, I have designed them to ideally not be opinionated entirely in one way or another. I think I want people to look at the loops, listen to their sound and think about how they feel, and why. Some of it is funny, some of it is uncomfortable, some is sad. I think this is the reality of life it is not all one note. It is not all black and white either, somedays I might think one way about one of these and another day I might feel differently.