I am an artist from the Bay Area currently living in Los Angeles. I work across a wide variety of mediums and am open to all types of creative projects. I mostly shoot live music photography, album covers, and music videos. I work with both digital and traditional film photography. My experience also includes different types of film set work involving art direction, camera assisting, event photography, and BTS photography. I am also available to edit music videos. During the COVID-19 pandemic, I began experimenting with virtual photography techniques which I still currently offer to long distance clients.

ARTIST STATEMENT

I have a foundation in studio art, but I always struggled to capture the realistic images that I envisioned. This led me to create abstract paintings and drawings, and to focus on large group projects such as building sets and props for theater and film.

I began experimenting with digital photography when I was a sound engineer at a punk music venue. I have many memories of playing with various techniques on the grimy floor, dodging moshing feet. When I discovered the “multiple exposure” mode in my camera, I was enthralled by the abstraction of reality. Every shot became image layered upon image, a distortion of bodies swinging guitars.

When I studied film photography I was fortunate enough to work in one of the few remaining community college darkrooms in Oakland. Shooting manually and the process of developing and printing film became my passion and led me to innovate different ways to create surreal effects in-camera, which is where I found the beauty in prisms. I use all types of reflective surfaces in my work, but mostly I build my own prisms to fit around or over each different type of lens. Almost all of the surreal images that you see are made in-camera, rather than using photoshop.

I moved to Los Angeles for school, where I obtained my degree in Sociology from UCLA. I later returned to study mortuary science at Cypress College, and currently work as an Embalmer. I found within these academic topics a new way of looking at the art world. All forms of art are connected. My experience as a studio artist has given me patience and freedom to play with different materials. My experience on film and theater sets has given me a very detail oriented eye. My experience in the music scene as well as studying sociology has shown me how invaluable community and collectivity is. My day to day experiences as a mortician working with chemicals as art, setting up Viewings as art, and guiding families through mourning processes all connect to my practice. As a Queer artist I create unique artwork because I know how important art is as a tool for social change and community building.

Many forms of mainstream and popular photography limit creativity, and they limit subject variability often excluding different identities. My photography business intends to defy that. It was built with the passion and support of the boundary pushing, resilient artists that make up my diverse Queer community. In creating my art, my goals are to not only discompose modern and mainstream photography, but to emphasize the sociological imagination. I strive to connect with subjects and document them as they are, while simultaneously using surreal techniques to transform the environment into what it is not. I want my subjects to have the power of being seen while showing viewers the fluidity of multiple realities.