I started taking pictures of my family when I began high school. I would use the photographs as a reference for paintings but to me then photography was access to a sitter that wasn’t in front of me at all instances. During this time I was also interested in architecture and wanted to pursue it as a career in college but unfortunate circumstances forced me to take a break from school. During this period I keep catching my self picking up my 35mm and documenting my surroundings. I’d take pictures of my brother, my mom, my little sisters and our home. In doing so I found I had a need to capture and reproduce moments of time in my families’ life and in mine. My photographs originated as very personal documentations of my perspective of them as well as a sort of psychotherapy that silently helped me cope with the turmoil that was my life.

Today, photography serves the same purpose in my personal work. My photographs work as page-turners of difficult situations and traumas. My most recent project is a series of self-portraits. Unlike before where I was looking outwardly to cope with life, I decided turn the camera and point it at myself. In these self-portraits I rid myself of any personality by removing all garments as well as any evidence of me in my bedroom aside from my physical self. I look at myself at different times of the day and night and capture different moods and feeling through the use of light and body language. I detached myself as the photographer to perform for the camera but I too detached myself as the sitter to evoke a clear meaning as the photographer. I set my camera in angles that provoke different feelings, some evoking erotica as well as feelings of sadness and emptiness and at times optimism.

This is an ongoing project.