Last Year

This work is from a new series called “LAST YEAR.” The source photographs that I am working with were taken during the protests occurring in Hong Kong over the past few months.  These images are shot using my smart-phone then printed in black and white.  I then work by hand on the images, sanding away much of the detail then applying other layers of colors and patterns.  When completed “Last Year” will have a total of 40 individual portraits.

This new series is important because it is the first time I have taken current events as my subject.  In general, my work always has history as its subject… and I am specifically interested in the dynamic relationship between individual people and the movement of history.  How people maintain their own sense of self in the midst of so many events beyond their control is a question I am continually addressing in my work.

I call this new series “LAST YEAR” because I am trying to see how this present moment will very soon be a past moment and understand what this means.   These hopeful and energetic young people who I am representing are both present and already past.  They are speaking out but will their voices be remembered?  I am not speaking for them or trying to memorialize them.  But rather I am interested in recording how a present moment is transformed into what we call ‘history.’

My work is a combination of photography and drawing.  The photographs I choose are all from very specific sources- historical photographs, film stills, family snapshots, images of objects in museums.  My method of “disrupting” these images by erasing, sanding, and overlaying random patterns is an attempt to bring the images back to the present.  By making them obscure we are forced to look again.  It is also important that my engagement with the photograph is physical-   a movement of the haptic in the realm of the visual.