The project „Talking from both sides of the mouth“ explores the notion of communication in various forms ranging from an inability to directly connect with someone, to misunderstandings, right down to attempting to connect with others although not having anyone recognize that a connection is being attempted. Having lived in Germany as an immigrant for the past 6 years I am continually faced with the challenges of communication on various levels – be it attempting to speak German or merely trying to stay in contact with my family. Using collage as a medium to explore this topic has been an important element for me in the conception of the work. Collage allows me to reference the world around me more directly – strangely enough – than „pure“ photography – as it references the layers that are consistently a part of my visual landscape.

This work is larger than the scan bed and therefore it appears that it is a perfect piece of paper - but actually it is a very irregular piece of paper.

Growing up in California I spent endless hours on the freeway. It is fair to say that I have been interested in the organic shape of freeways for sometime. These very round and winding exits and entrances have always been exciting to me. I have always wished I could have a bird's eye view of the freeway systems. So I was quite happy when I recently stumbled across this freeway image which is positioned below the character. Living in Germany I don't get much opportunity to go on the Autobahn, but somehow when I do, it is always a very different experience.

The text reads:
Her: What are you going to do?
Him: I'm not going to make believe nothing ever happened.

This piece took me a while to figure out.
I was totally intrigued by the tattoos on the guy. I have never seen a found photo with a person with tattoos before.