Monuments series

My work explores the role of photography in memorializing artifacts, blurs the line between popular forms of collecting and institutional archives, and plays with the narratives created by the arbitrary juxtapositions of images. I am interested in the relationship between memories and objects, and how that is enhanced by the act of photographing. Photography changes objects by its very nature—by instantly removing things from their original time and space and depositing them elsewhere—much like placing something in a collection. I play with scale, juxtaposition, and different modes of presentation to manipulate the meaning of the things I photograph and to create new meanings. Monuments consists of 34 images. I have also made a tiny folding book of the images, a museum that can fit in a pocket. I hope the viewer will create new stories for these everyday objects, and think about the impulse to accumulate objects and imbue them with meaning.