This series, entitled, “X/R Project,” is a compilation of self portraiture, a dossier. The images are original. Though utilizing advanced photographic media equipment, I do not use upgraded programs such as Adobe Photoshop, or filtering applications. Here, I restrict image revision by utilizing only basic documentation and editing applications that my iPhone and iPad come equipped with, strictly limiting my use to the exposure, brilliance, cropping and lens chroma (black and white or sepia) tools.  I maintain a low tech approach in my creative process in favor of accidental discovery and to capture the rawness and the directness of early photography. A moment in time captured still, as a memory, a dream, an idea, a fantasy.  It is not uncommon for me to lose a completed work due to a sudden glitch; a “maxing out” on rudimentary programming tools. These unhappy occurrences challenge me to accept fate and to regrow my work.  

From an early age, basic resources were extremely limited to me. Surviving with scarcity has fueled my life long pursuit to use as little as possible maximally.  Central to my artistic practice is self imposed limitation of resources. I challenge myself by restricting my tools so that I am forced to exploit limitations to my full advantage. How much can I do with only this in hand.  

Lighting, composition, setting, content, and words are all cohesively manipulated throughout the series, “X/R Project,” using the same limited digital tools. Working digitally is essential for referencing and archiving these episodes of memory, space, identity and statement, but by minimizing my tools, timelessness and the continuity of time can interface and become interchangeable. An anachronistic plane, a non-linear time zone is created, an essential conceptual framework in which these figures, spaces, words can function, inhabit. 

Raw, honest, violent, beautiful, ugly, the images explore the ruse of sexuality, dominance, submission, female power, manipulation, the pursuit of intimacy, the ego: self love, self hate, the psychological, physical, emotional state; mind/ body/ soul, privacy, exposure and vulnerability. Words as interpretation, thought, belief, words as indelible tattoos; what is born in the flesh is bred in the bone, words as veils, clothing, obscuration, revelation, words as flesh; self worth, self perception, incantation, perpetuation, truth, lies. These images are a record of an anachronistic evolution of the personae, an unsystematic branching process of adaptation, maladaptation, and consequence.

The pervasive subcontext; the struggle of the self against the power and control of the ultimate inescapable, potentially lethal human frailties; social anxiety and social isolation. Our Achilles heel, these perilous emotional fragilities are woven inextricably into the human brain. Social isolation; solitary confinement, is the simplest form of human torture. Correlating with scientific investigations of Evolutionary Psychology, this work addresses recurrent ancestral problems of survival evident throughout human development.

A discourse between Idealism versus realism; a  desperate navigation between falseness/ social acceptance versus truth/ fear of alienation. Pictorially, for example, reference is made to the ideals of ancient Egyptian iconographic paintings and sculptures; figures in impossible idealized forms, persistent and pacifying repetition. Yet conceptually, idealism is considered as a psychological adaptation; fostering the idea of self, the ego, the attribution of an oversimplified series of traits, qualities and beliefs onto an individual. A psychological projection, an idealized conceptual entity, the irony between beauty and reality, the cost of authentic intimate connection.

Residing in the psychological, self imprisonment becomes a structure for living. “X/R Project” is a foray into pain; physical, emotional, psychological and pain as metaphor, pain avoidance; the compulsion to self protect; vis a vis obsession, emotional anorexia, avoidant attachment, for example and intrinsic traumatic response; mental illness, PTSD. These Images document flux, the delicate balancing of adapted survival mechanisms, the lust for the superficial, the spectrum of subjugation, the denial or acceptance of violence, pain, pleasure.