Kodak and the Comet, 2018-ongoing


Sourced from my personal archive of exposed film negatives, Kodak and the Comet presents modified and effaced images of Detroit from 2006 and prior in the context of the city’s current day "revival.” Employing a corrosive technique that uses a variety of household cleaning products, I irreversibly alter the color emulsions of the film. Through several rounds of this process, the original photographs become surreal and abstracted.

Depictions of the Detroit landscape shift from foreground to background as their details are obscured by color fields and splotches, at once complicating the notion of photography as a record of time and of history on both a personal and civic scale. By creating a sense of strangeness from familiar representations of Detroit’s landscape, I attempt to visualize the complications, hemorrhages, and erasures that emerge from the city’s ever-shifting physical, economic, and social landscape. The final images in Kodak and the Comet are produced on a large scale and exhibited in wall-sized installations, referencing abstract expressionist painting with the goal of creating an immersive viewing experience.










Nachtwerk, 2018-ongoing


Photographed in the months immediately following my father’s death, Nachtwerk is an exploration into internal spaces of longing and loss. Shot primarily at night as a result of persistent insomnia, the images frequently employ mirrors and lenses as motifs that explore the camera’s value as a tool through which we might gaze more deeply inward. Nachtwerk means “nightwork” in Dutch but also references the pioneering electronic music group Kraftwerk, who were known—especially in regards to photo shoots—to be extremely reclusive. Similarly, the photographs in Nachtwerk embody a refusal to engage directly with the camera. These photographs employ indirect angles, both literally and metaphorically, as I attempt to capture invisible and intangible expanses that so often feel impossible to photograph.










Readers of the Cosmos


Rooftops reveal cities as layered, multiple and interconnected. They can be sites of peace, danger, intimacy, and solitude. Sometimes they also are a space of wonder, linking us to the cosmos and dissolving our sense of individualism while allowing us to feel like one drop in a vast urban sea.

Readers of the Cosmos was produced in collaboration with Laboratorio para la Ciudad, a creative think-tank of the local government of Mexico City centered around urban creativity and civic innovation. This photographic series considers the concept of the city’s rooftops as public space, and as temporary havens for refuge and connection.


90 pages
Softcover | 8.25 x 10.75 in.
Text by Pablo Landa
Designed by Eva Zielinski
Made with LabCDMX, 2018

       






Your Town Tomorrow


Photographed between 2007 and 2017, Your Town Tomorrow chronicles the city of Detroit as it enters the great recession, and then later as it emerged as a site for reinvestment and gentrification. Although documentary in format, it is also a very personal series as it runs parallel with my own life and work in Detroit, and portrays the communities where I have lived, as well as my friends and neighbors.

As economic interests, new developments and corporate investors continue to alter the structure of the city, Your Town Tomorrow portrays Detroit communities intertwining in the midst of challenging transitions, including young families, activists, urban farmers, and long-time residents. With these photographs I aim to activate a larger conversation about the United States today. When we feel our political system is failing us, how do we move forward? These images depict many of the grassroots organizations and activist groups in Detroit that have pioneered creative ways of dealing with America’s social and economic issues. Your Town Tomorrow explores new topographies and forms of urbanism during a time when everyday life stands at a crossroads between hope and despair, vulnerability and strength, the past and the future.


160 pages
Foil stamped laminated hardcover
105 color photographs | 9.25 x 11.5 in
Designed by Kikko Paradela
Printed by Ofset Yapimevi, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-578-44369-0

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Elsewhere (Suitcase City), 2015