Archive

“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 and history have influenced my work. For the past few years, I've been particularly 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.