Artist's Statement

     I work with 19^th century and traditional darkroom processes to create portraits that are honest to my subjects identity and experience while paradoxically emphasizing how easily photographs are manipulated.

      We currently live in an era where manipulating an image is easier than ever before. In a world where creating seamless falsities has become the norm, this work breaks away from a photoshop type of manipulation by returning to some of the earliest 19^th century photographic processes.

      My work gives everyone a different interpretation of my subjects: My hope is that by manipulating each of these images in a different way that a different interpretation of the subject comes through. Sometimes this interpretation is honest to the subject, and sometimes it is a falsity. I leave that up to the viewer and the subjects in my photographs to decide.