artist's statement: looking not looking (ongoing)
What began as a simple exercise in “street” photography, has subsequently developed into a large scale (70+ images; ongoing) series intended to be seen as one, singular work of portraiture. A typography of sorts (and in dialogue with work by Lou Stoumen and Walker Evans, amongst others) Looking Not Looking straddles the line between voyeurism and portraiture, investigating the loneliness and isolation of the individual within the dense, public space of the metropolitan subway. With extremely limited tonal palette and the excision of selective detail, the commuters seen here—identified sometimes only through clothing or semi-anonymous body parts—find isolation and stillness in the light of cell phone screens or an outwardly fixed gaze that belies its interiority. The series asks what it means to be alone and an individual within the homogeneity of the 21st century urban environment.