Considerations of vision—of how we look at the world at large, as well as how we customarily employ photography to document and speak to our surroundings—have long been central to my conceptual interests within photography. What do we look at photographically, and what do we ignore? My most recent work, Verso, looks to probe the tension between what conventionally constitutes a picture space and the underlying factors, textual or otherwise, that work to reinforce and define that space. These stark images allow the viewer to glimpse only the backs of photographs—gleaned from my family’s visual history as well as from anonymous, found photographic collections. Hints of text, stamped numbers, tape and glue marks—all relics of a pre-pixel age—invite the viewer to construct their own photographic image on an imagined reverse side.

As with much of my work, my hope is that through the photographic rendering of these auxiliary surfaces they will take on visual lives of their own, sparking questions about our habits and customs of vision. The backs of photographs are surfaces that are intended to be seen, if at all, only in the context of the silver gelatin photographic information on the reverse side, and yet, when severed from that information, they become rich picture spaces in and of themselves.