Thin Skinned began in the summer of 2004 when I was an artist in residence at ArtSway in the New Forest in southern England. Most of the residency was devoted to creating Reverb, a computer-based projection that explores the transmission of history and memory. In this piece, historical and personal photographs are juxtaposed against a background of archival Internet audio fragments examining the political, historical, and social landscape since World War II. Responding to what I was seeing and hearing as I edited Reverb, I was inspired to create photographic images that existed on a more abstract and metaphoric level. Listening to the news reports of the escalating war in Iraq, I was drawn to the burnt out parts of the forest and forts created by children throughout the forest. I continued the series back in New York using other sites of decay as backgrounds.
Using the technique of double exposure, my eyes become a portal through which the viewer sees and through which I see out. Creases in my face appear to be trails. My skin is no longer protective.
