Washed & Sullied

When I'm looking at faces, all I see are the eyes, but a face isn't a face with the eyes alone. In these portraits I enjoy experimenting with the subtle interplay between light and colored skin. Experimenting with make-up's ability to simultaneously accentuate and distort the sublet contours of the subjects face. The process starts with a full coverage of make-up, and then washing off the make-up randomly and gradually with water, allowing for an element of chance. My work is inspired by a certain dark quietness that may imply a kind of ambiguity, an inherent avoidance of obviousness. We are a species in which the sense of sight serves as the largest window to perceive the world through, but our perception has a much greater depth and complexity than what sight alone provides. Photography is a way of trying to hold onto what is intangible.