The question "What color is a chameleon placed on (a) mirror?" was posed by biologist Stewart Brand in the early 1970's. When the two are left on their own, perhaps they will swim together in an endless cycle of imitation until finally settling on the most neutral of possibilities or maybe they will be frozen forever in a visual stand-off– both unsure of how to imitate the imitator. I often find myself pondering this thought experiment in relation to my studio practice. The location of my photographic work could be grounded inside the mirrored box with the chameleon, stuck in the present time of the riddle, exploring photography's varying capacity for representation in relation to perception, duplication, and memory.
I am drawn to the tension created by the photograph's ability to be both poetic and indexical and its possibility for either flatness and illusory space. The way sequence and cultural context constructs meaning. In my work I construct new relationships between phenomena to exploit the slippage of meaning between objects, perceived space, and a view. I reframe the relationship between images, familiar objects, and one-of-a-kind artifacts by manipulating them in real space and documenting these constructions with photographs. The desired end result is for the viewer to have a more considered relationship with the images and objects they interact with. I ultimately use photography as a tool to propose that nothing has a fixed meaning; reality is only defined by the relationship between phenomena.
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