Photographic Interference, 2010 Look/Not/Look, 2011 Medicated, 2011 Reports of Dying, 2011 Fore Eyes, 2012 Bodies, 2012 Some Images I Can’t Stop Thinking About, 2012 Lives Lost on Two Days, 2020 The Human Toll, 2020 Ukraine, 2022
Photographic Interference [2010-ongoing] explores our contemporary predicament in which photographs and news reports assault us and surreptitiously envelop us.
Photographs of atrocity are everywhere. It is hard to look and hard to look away. As an artist I cannot ignore these images—they get under my skin. I make artworks that use and reference this media landscape, exploring the afterlife of images and the experience of looking at photographs as a disruptive encounter. I incorporate my gaze into images as an intervention to disrupt and to interfere with our perception and understanding, draw attention to the act of looking, and connect the personal with the political. I am both image-maker and consumer.
The foundation for the project is my collection of over 8,000 New York Times news sections. I began saving the front-page section of the New York Times in March 1999 when NATO started bombing Serbia during the Kosovo War. My idea was to have a stack of newspapers that signified a war. When the cease-fire was signed, a true resolution had not been reached, so I kept collecting. The World Trade Center was attacked, and I kept collecting. I have not stopped.