Carved out of my experiences growing up as a photographer within the D.M.V., my studio operation of art direction for the artists I’ve had the honor of collaborating with, the visceral experience of interrogating gaze, the sublime experience of being bleacher-side watching an older brother football for an HBCU in the South, notes on questioning beauty and aesthetic within symbols and motifs, video game culture, notes on masculinity, dirtbikes, barbershop experiences, remixes of paintings in art history, 3D printed necklaces and everything in-between, Voyager:deconstructionist tactics is an autobiographical and communal documentary project I worked on from early 2018-2019 between Prince George’s County, MD, and Richmond, VA with a group of friends and collaborators. Within these images are photographs of friends, family members and objects within the alternative universe that is Voyager.
Voyager was birthed out of a collage of psychological space, a culmination of socio-cultural experiences and an urgent need to see the people in my life see themselves and at an honest level of representation, beauty and honesty I felt missing from the contemporary canon of photographs and images within both art history and the digital realm. Foundationally structured from filmmaking practices, Voyager: deconstructionist tactics is a photo-based psychological map loosely rooted from NASA’s 1977 probe of the same name that left Earth to explore Outer Space. On this probe was the Golden Record, a 12” phonograph record that carried sounds and images portraying life and culture on Earth in case intelligent life were to discover the probe. Within my own images are photographs rooted in portraiture, still lives and images that serve as “scores of production”, building a constellation of these psychological spaces, collages and experiences.
This body of work is a step towards a spatial agency i’ve been trying to both create, preserve and archive. I’ve always felt that photography has an inherent need, desire, responsibility and urgency to “show people another way of being” – When we make images of people in our lives, we are showing “A way, the way, and another possibility”, and Voyager’s goal has been to create that energy – for myself, my friends and everyone within that experience.
This work would not be without the countless people who helped in the creation of this so i say thank you. gang shit. 2018-2019
blakekathryn
theartofmadeline
turnnoffyourmind
izzy806
2087
germansingergirl
