These images are the beginning of what I envision will be a lifelong exploration of narrative impulse and the ways in which it is supported, reinforced, and manipulated—both from within (as one comes to terms with filial legacy, genetic influence, personal identity, and mortality), and without (how ideology plays a role in constituting the demands and expectations of one’s personal narrative). In these photographs I am investigating spaces where building blocks for this phenomenon are put in place as well as spaces in which people gather to consider the ways in which these devices have failed them. These pictures seek to address the ways in which we are provided tools that are employed to create narratives in response to that which we cannot control, and how they in turn serve to protect and constrain simultaneously. I believe that everyone is forced to come to terms with the narratives that lie encoded within and the conflict that arises between those and the ones that we inscribe in addition to, and in spite of our genetic predispositions, as well as the narratives that we unconsciously (and consciously) adopt from the sociological context whence we came and to which we are bound. |