Photographer's Statement
If there's a common element to the way I perceive most of my photographs, it has to be silence, and the spaces between silences where other things happen. For that reason, the real influences on my work are not other photographers—although I owe an obvious debt to Mapplethorpe—but rather musicians... specifically, the sparest works of John Cage, and also the serene ambient jazz of Tomasz Stanko, Arild Andersen, and Tord Gustavsen.
I define art as a creative endeavour, intended to convey message or emotion, that has no practical or functional value. It's therefore not entirely clear to me whether my photographs qualify as such. Surely in interior design, the conveyance of emotion IS a practical function; when we are comfortable in spaces, we can live and work and grow in them. I'm not sure if a photograph that assists towards this end is any less practical or more aesthetically significant than, say, a mid-century Mies or Le Corbusier chair that by virtue of its uncomfortable construction has become purely a sculpture to be admired.
Ultimately I decided it doesn't matter whether the photographs are art, which conveniently gets me out of having to solve the problem. I enjoy looking at the objects captured in them and I hope you do too.
TMA