This project began with the desire to build an image around fire, which led to creating a series on the elements. Curiously though, the project began to take on a life of its own. Each image became less about the series and more about telling a story. The desire to build certain components into each set became a compulsion for me, as did the need to make the image in my mind a reality. It was only after completing the first few photographs that I began to realize I was symbolically investigating my own life. Each picture was part of a conceptual autobiography which, when viewed, became much like interpreting my own dreams. I was pictorially capturing my memoirs, acknowledging unrealized emotions and motivations, and examining my own nostalgia. Also, I think that creating these spaces allows me to literally live in my own imagination, if only for a short time, and satisfies my need to create a more aesthetically pleasing reality. Recently, I began opening my scenes as installations, which feature a live model and allow an audience to experience them as I do but to add their own interpretations and ideas, thus making the story a shared experience.
These scenes/installations take place in my garage, which I converted into a studio after using the dilapidated space to capture “asleep,” the first image in this series.
