“Pictures of children are at once the most common, the most sacred, and the most controversial images of our time” – Ann Higonnet
(Pictures of Innocence. Thames and Hudson:1998)
Simultaneous contradictions – qualities which seem to be opposite yet somehow coexist – draw me to the imagery of childhood. I am interested in combined feelings of discomfort and familiarity, and in how a picture of a child can be both utterly mundane and disturbingly surreal. What happens when presumed innocence is twisted with a willful sense of knowing, or when the provocateur and the victim are the same? How can a child be both unnervingly creepy and hauntingly beautiful at the same time?
Readings in science, history, and culture influence my work. I’m fascinated by the history of childhood as a concept, and how today, childhood seems to be in a perpetual state of redefinition with influences from the media, technology, and globalization.
