WHEREVER I GO THERE I AM
‘Wherever I Go, There I Am’ is an ongoing project of self-reflection and an attempt to connect with the world around me. As a project it’s taken many different forms but here it is a series of four collections of snapshots. The first gallery, ‘Surface’, reflects my internal and external journey around the world and is limited primarily to the literal surfaces of things. The second gallery confines the story of my journey to just my home state of New Mexico while the third gallery is a collection of images from my exploration of the rest of the world. The last collection, ‘Everything, Everywhere’, is a combination of all three galleries.
In each gallery, the order has been selected completely randomly by a slideshow software so as to not too overtly connect images and concepts and to allow for new discoveries and connections between images to happen both for myself and for the viewer who brings their own subjective lenses to them.
(for those interested in reading more…)
The more I see and experience in the world, the more convinced I am that I’m wrong about everything…actually, we all are. Everything we think we know about reality is impossibly colored by the lenses of bias we’ve both inherited and created (most often through trauma) to makes sense of the world we share. I’ve found that this unknowing, rather than being the terrifying thing that I was taught it should be, has become the most liberating epiphany I’ve experienced. It’s in that liminal space of unknowing that I’ve found I can approach the mysteries of this life with childlike wonderment and sincere curiosity, rather than judgement and fear. It’s also in this space of unknowing humility for me that I feel like bridges between myself and others are possible…bridges of love, and empathy, and grace.
As someone who has lived most of my life (until recently) with an undiagnosed and unmedicated ADHD neurodivergence, I’ve realized that I’ve actually used my camera as a tool to be more present and observe along the way in life. It was a helpful medium to observe both the literal and metaphorical light and texture of my experiences. Framing a moment in a photograph also created an artifact I could use for a sort of retrospective presentness (if there is such a thing). Each photo could be used as a meditation point to reflect back on or as source material for my paintings and writings. It was a way to sift back through my journey and make connections between things I was too distracted or overwhelmed to see in the moment.
Because of this approach, I rarely see my photography as an isolated print, but rather as parts of a larger tapestry of images and thoughts. They are pieces of evidence that can be stitched together to tell a bigger story, both of the world I see, but, perhaps just as importantly, the world within myself. Nothing about photography is any more objective than any other form of art. Every image we make can be a sort of Rorschach test that reveals our biases, our traumas, our fears and our hopes. While my photos undeniably reflect all my ignorance and naivety, I’m hopeful that the vulnerability in sharing them also reflects a sincere practice of observing and desire to connect with the world around me.