Aftermath

Aftermath

"The unrelenting news cycle and live streaming of events has made us numb to the tragedy of the everyday disaster. As we scroll endlessly through the feed, we dismiss the finality of the ruin because it is abstract and detached from our reality. This may be why we are so inclined to gawk at a car crash, or a house that is on fire, or a car that has plunged into flood waters, it is happening there in front of us and it is unavoidable, we instinctively pull out our phones and hit record. There is something unsettling and humbling about how a routine act such as a morning commute or trip to the grocery store can end up being a final act. And it is also somewhat ironic that the vehicle meant to help us escape catastrophe is actually what leads us towards it. Many of these images come from the news media, some come from manipulated images, some are generated and then reinterpreted, that indifference to the source and veracity is critically important in that it diminishes the significance of the individuality of each image. This is at the crux of what this work is about, by displaying these images in volume they are meant to lose their context, the story become lost in the consumption of the image, this offers a window into the way images are distributed through various media. An image may become stretched, flipped, pixelated, cropped, removed from its original source or context and then redistributed. Even the grid in which these works are grouped together is meant to evoke the image of a screen displaying every terrible thing happening as it happens, watching events unfold from a thousand miles away. This level of indifference is not universal but it is increasingly commonplace. And because there is seemingly inexhaustible content it is even more difficult to know the truth of an image or video. This makes it more palatable to dismiss anything that makes us uncomfortable and yet that discomfort compels us to consume. This work is not meant to be explicit, it is the aftermath of events unknown in their time, location, outcome, and truthfulness. It is descriptive without being specific, that lack of specificity infers that perhaps there was no tragedy and that it’s possible that what is observed never occurred at all."