I've taken a lot of photos since I've been in LA. The camera relates to my work because for one, it gives me hard physical evidence of a non-solipsistic world, a world where objects and subjects exist on their own accord and on their own terms, they don't melt and morph to coincide with the fancies of my mind. I started using the camera a lot because it was helpful to have reference photos when I was working, and then, of course, I began to get interested in making better photographs.
Using the camera journalistically to record a place and the people who inhabit the place, and to record how the people and the place change over time has given me insight into narrative structures, what it takes to convey the continuity of a situation over a passage of time and space. I regard my paintings as narrative in this way, but having the opportunity to use the camera in three dimensional scenarios has helped me to get a better grasp on what the narrative means visually, how to leave clues and overlap images so that they are connected.
The camera has become a way of drawing or sketching ideas and progressions, concepts, making notes in a Robert Smithson journaling sense, but it has also become an end in itself over the last several months. I've explored it aesthetically as well as conceptually and towards different ends, from publicity shots for musicians and actors, to
series of photos that work like video stills and progress over time, to abstraction, gesture, and journalism.
