Artist Statement for

Interventions into Public Space Project

Most people go on vacation to escape their everyday, to flee from other people and experience a new location and life. I choose to seek out these individuals to interact with them in a particular way. Locations have historical or commercial significance often are designated as tourist attractions, one of the few public places left to attract large crowds that mix freely. These sightseers are there to pretend to be someone else, to absorb the surroundings, to relax and to forget. But their destinations are frequently heavy with an emotional charge left from previous visitors; there is a collective, shared memory that is retrievable to those who participate. And just as globalization has made individiuality common and standardized, so too do people in diverse locations react in a similar, unified manner. The specific backgrounds in each photograph tend to seem anonymous, interchangeable, and uninformative; the emphasis is on the influence of the place on the people, not vice versa. The core of this project is this idea of accessing the almost sacred space and the visitors' psychological states.

My selection of the bustling tourist site targets both the resident and visiting population, but my main goal is as a tourist sightseeing fellow visitors. I redirect a walkway by blocking it in some fashion, forcing others to move around me. As they do so, my camera takes their picture, but only if they decide to interact with me, the photographer, and look back. I am seeking intervention into their lives, as well as a form of intimacy. My position is close but not uncomfortably so; I want a mutual moment of existing in this emotionally charged location, sharing and creating an experience with another person. Their reactions range from curiosity, surprise, suspicion, pleasure and fear. The action jostles them out of their complacency and recreation into a different mindset, one perhaps more like the one they left behind. They cease to be part of the multitude and become individuals again, separating themselves from the habitually constructed space nearby.

Vulnerability draws me to taking these images of people. Intruding in this manner is a form of voyeurism on my part as I watch and snap before I can be stopped. Most voyeurs revel in the thrill of possibly being caught; I unashamedly yearn to be discovered. By being so blatantly positioned, there is a tacit understanding and a give and take between the subject and myself. The audience, finally, is given a chance to role-play. Either they can inhabit the world before them, or they can envision what it was like to be the photographer, the voyeur. I am investigating ties with collaboration and the ethics of photographing interlopers and inhabitants. The viewer, subject, and myself are all complicit in these activities, just as we merge our memories and sensations into the combined history of the setting.