In my work I employ the materiality of photography to alter the way we perceive the world around us. These photographs are dependent upon the mechanics of the camera to create new modes of seeing. I am interested in subverting the assumptions we make about our reality by asking the viewer to relearn information about what they are looking at and not to rely on what they know. By manipulating the tools of photography I attempt to reveal a world we aren’t generally able to experience.

With the support of an American-Scandinavian Foundation Fellowship, I have traveled with researchers into remote forests that were once used by the indigenous, reindeer-herding people of Scandinavia, the Sami. The northwest of Sweden is stark and craggy, with clear-cut vistas surrounding vast expanses of untouched, Scotts pine forest. Throughout these woods, one can encounter sacred trees, boulders, mountains and settlements once inhabited by the Sami. Drawing from a rich tradition of spirit photography and early experiments with the medium, I populate this landscape with ghostly figures, two headed-mystics and indecipherable signs. I weave these manipulated images with empty, eerie environments layered with cultural traces, building an imagined underworld and blurring the line between what is real and what is created.