I am a voracious reader: The New Yorker, the Atlantic, the Paris Review, the New York Times, the New York Times Magazine, novels, non-fiction, long-form journalism, poetry, essays, op-eds and on and on and on. School provides a lot of inspiration too, I’ve had some incredible teachers who pointed me in new directions, towards thinkers and writers I would have never encountered on my own. I’ve learned a lot of critical theory in the last few years, about how we tell stories and the intersection of knowledge and power in society. Those heady ideas have really come alive in my photography process, in that I am thinking about dynamics of power, gender, and race as I shoot.
What about my own perspective is limiting and limited? What is this photographic exchange about? Who is really in control? My unconscious or my consciousness, my subject or me, the media, society, convoluted notions of beauty? Those questions keep me engaged with the practice and allow me to believe that there is more to an image than an accumulation of pixels. Viviane Sassen intrigues me, I feel like she is asking similar questions, right at the intersection of fashion and art. I appreciate her commitment to women.