My work focuses on an attempt to extract the essence of a place through photographic means. At times I do this through the scope of a social or an environmental issue, but other times I work with a broader inquiry.
The work I am presenting here is entitled Loop Derivatives and is the result of my personally questioning a religious upbringing and coming to terms with an existential mindset. When I began to question my own religious faith I simultaneously saw an increased value in the immediacy of life and all of the smallest events that I experienced. My photographic response to this was simply to photograph people walking in downtown Chicago, the busiest place that I frequently find myself. It is the place where I realized routine overcame nearly everyone I saw. Nothing was out of the norm, and yet it all could be very special.
While fascinated with the strangers of the city I also became entranced with how the motion of the city and the architecture mixed and I attempted to define how I felt every time I took a walk through the city. I photographed only looking to capture tone, motion and gesture: the intangibles. Using digital composites of multiple photographs, each piece in Loop Derivatives represents a separate walk in downtown Chicago. The images are an attempt to redefine how a sense of place can be visually represented in the photographic medium by trying to communicate a visceral and emotional reaction, rather than a factual or representative interpretation.
