Vessels

An ongoing series, Vessels was initially inspired by my reaction to the policy of separating children from their families at the U.S.-Mexico border during the previous U.S. administration. Vessels is evolving into a stream-of-consciousness visual metaphor invoking the treacherous yet lyrical journey of the immigrant who crosses continents, oceans, and borders in a utopian attempt to enter an unwelcoming West.

 

Vessels includes candid photography portraits of people riding the number 7 train at the Junction Boulevard station in Jackson Heights, New York, one of the most diverse neighborhoods on earth where more than 160 languages are spoken. The portraits are cut out in digital post-production and embedded with aleatorily-disassembled still-life photographs of elements from the same train station. Artworks are then aleatorily re-colored in post-production.

 

Driven by personal histories and inquiries, I photograph the individual in the street and their habitat to create site-specific visual ethnographies [non-exclusively] referencing identity, culture, power, history, politics, and socioeconomic class. I am borrowing language from the [art] painting canon and experimenting with the aleatory disassembly of the photograph, striving to blur the line between art and photography while invoking visual meditations on being.

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