THE NEW MACHINERY

The contraptions presented in “The New Machinery,” a new series of constructed photographs, are amalgamations of abstracted parts. Their presence is both sinister and seductive, and while logic is implied, their function remains inscrutable. Materiality is a critical part of this work. The machinery’s components — individual photographs that waver between spatial illusion and flat impression — are all trackings of materials in space. I work with discarded objects: obsolete glass samples, out-of-service machine parts, plastic toys, marks on paper, whose imperfections announce their well-handled history. The results are records of their momentary presence before the camera. These work prints become my raw materials. I piece them together as physical objects, overlapping and underlapping them into active and sculptural photographic space. In a final step, I translate the physical construction back into its digital language. I think of this process as a way to picture clash and cooperation within these shadowy bodies. The new machinery in our lives, like these photographs, is neither stable nor fixed. As the hardware disappears, their skill in infiltrating our lives increases; and their ability to create communities of data about us, around us, but not with us—expands.