Artist’s Statement

WRETCHED SMILE is a collection of photographs that aims to provoke philosophical contemplation of perception, identity, and existence. This work challenges the notion of reality in photography by utilizing masks to obscure the humanity of its subjects, creating humanoid-like figures that become analogous with their environment. 

When pondering the idea of my own existence, I often become extremely overwhelmed, experiencing a yearning to disappear and no longer be perceived. The masks symbolize this desire to be free from perception and judgment, allowing the subjects to exist as anonymous characters in a detached reality. The uncanny quality of the masks paired with the eerie, dystopian settings creates a spotlight on the irrationality of the universe, and acts as a visual representation for the absurdity of life. By embracing the absurd, my work forces viewers to confront the conflict between the human desire to find meaning, and the idea that no meaning really exists.

In an effort to channel the energy of the greatest mask photographer, Ralph Eugene Meatyard, I have composed this body of work using an antique twin lens reflex camera from the 1950s. The entirety of the collection was produced using black and white medium format film, with the lack of color facilitating the vague ambiguity of the photographs. My work isn’t meant to be a continuation of Meatyard’s, but rather an adaptation within my own reality, and an acknowledgement of our similarities in interest. If there’s any main connecting thread between my work and that of Ralph Eugene Meatyard,  it doesn't lie solely in the masks, but more so his own notion that “creative pictures must be felt in a similar way as one listens to music, emotionally, without expecting a story, information, or facts.”