Artist Statement

My practice is inspired by a fundamental debate about the nature of time.

I photograph a subject, print it on Hahnemühle paper, place new objects on top of the print, and photograph it again. I repeat this multiple times. Each layer is made in its own present, turning the one beneath it into the past, while the next waits as the future. In making the work, I move through time one moment at a time, much like presentism describes: only the present is real, the past no longer exists, and the future does not exist yet.

In the finished piece, however, all layers collapse into a single image, and every one of those moments is there at once, much like eternalism says: past, present, and future are equally real, and exist simultaneously.

Through this trompe l'oeil process, layers do not survive intact. With every round of rephotographing, edges soften and the crisp detail of the original photograph fades. The further back a layer sits, the more it blurs, the way a memory is reshaped and distorted each time we revisit it.