These are not pictures of water, but conversations with it. In this dialogue, water becomes a metaphor, embodying the essence of time, fluid, inexorable, transformative. To photograph water is to grasp at an elusive current only to realize that what is seen is but a fragment of what exists. Like time, water is both eternally present and forever slipping away, caught in the dance between being and becoming. Attempting to hold time is like holding water in your hands. A fools errand resulting only in a grotesque approximation that feels nothing like it did in the moment.
Duke Hall Fine Arts Gallery
James Madison University
Harrisonburg, VA
May 2025
Iteration of "A Fool's Errand" at the Staunton Augusta Art Center, 2025.
The photograph is often seen as an intimate window onto the world, for it carries a
seductive offer: to present objectivity, to capture reality. However, when the photo no
longer masquerades as an indexical sign, it can embrace itself as a performative site where language, time, representation and perceived reality are entangled in amorphous activity. This series aims to interrogate the photographic image’s capacity to expose new ways of perceiving these intangible elements.
seductive offer: to present objectivity, to capture reality. However, when the photo no
longer masquerades as an indexical sign, it can embrace itself as a performative site where language, time, representation and perceived reality are entangled in amorphous activity. This series aims to interrogate the photographic image’s capacity to expose new ways of perceiving these intangible elements.
Every black and white image has been taken with identical location and framing of the same water scene over many months, with only the time of day changing. In these images, water becomes a metaphor, embodying the essence of time: fluid, inexorable, transformative. To photograph water is to grasp at an elusive current, only to realize that what is seen is but a fragment of what exists. As a series, these abstract images begin to speak their own language, resisting representation while creating their own semiotic system of self-referential signs.
How do photographs enact their own reality and engage the viewer in these new worlds? What emerges when focus is shifted from what the camera records, to how the subjective act of seeing shapes our own perceived reality? Is it possible to see the same photograph twice?
This series is being created in response to these questions. It is an invitation to lean into the unstable space between seeing and understanding; being and becoming.