The Undemocratic Forest
This experimental conceptual work engages with the loss of the democratic nature of photography. There is an enormous amount of human made and machine generated images and what is ultimately viewed depends on the power of certain actors to make certain images count. What is photographic democracy when the ubiquity of images, the speed of circulation, and the capacity to control their value, devoid photographs from having agency? Despite the belief in the veracity and evidentiary nature of the image, photography rarely allows for truth or falsehood to be directly established upon it. This series contains photographs taken without attempting to provide evidence for something. None of these photographs proves or disproves a point in an issue—whether it is a documentary, aesthetic, informational, or social point. These photographs lack inherent meaning and they acquire value and meaning only by being published on this website.
Peak Data
[The viewer is asked to approach these photographs as data.] Making these photographs is an experiment in collecting evidence that is not an indication for something. This is very similar to AI created images. Collecting/creating data that does not prove or disprove a point or demonstrate an issue (other than, perhaps, that photographing took place or that machine intelligence was at work). Data is almost never intimately connected to an issue. This is a moment where humans and machines can produce as much data as they need: Peak data.
