Graduate Thesis Artist Statement

Science throughout history has used the tools of photography to capture the world, reorganizing it in an understandable way. In the early 1800’s, when photography was first introduced as a craft, scientists eagerly accepted the ability to capture images of the world around them. With these images, scientists were able to organize and categorize new species of animals, plants, and cultures. As technology progressed, these images were sent around the world and allowed others to experience life beyond the front door. By the 1960s photographic technologies rapidly changed allowing artists such as Jerry Uelsmann to use the darkroom to create worlds that could only be seen in his minds eye. The twenty-first century has also brought the digital age the ability of other artists such as Maggie Taylor and Brooke Shaden to digitally categorize and create new worlds through the experience of their reality. Uelsmann, Taylor and Shaden, as well as early scientists, used and still use photography to better understand the world. With my work, I break down the people and places of my past life; not as a way to judge the person or place, but as a way to reconstruct past environments to create a new map to better understand my present self. During the mid to late 1830’s, photographers were using photographs to better understand their world as well. They collaborated with scientists to captur