Project Statement: Ersatz

Ersatz is a photographic exploration about how architecture influences those who inhabit it. Architecture plays an important part in how people interact, where and whether they interact, and how they feel about the activity that happens in the space. People recognize when they do not like a space or if it is lacking something and shown in this work is the attempts to rectify the flaws in the design.

Ersatz: [er-zahts]: An artificial substance or article used to replace something natural or genuine; a substitute.

This work examines artificial features that are incorporated into publicly accessible spaces: commercial, corporate, and institutional, constructed environments in an attempt to mitigate or lessen the effect of structures that, while functional, are essentially cold flat featureless boxes. This collection seeks to draw the viewer's attention to the presence of these ersatz elements in modern architectural spaces.

All of these images depict elements added to the environment to simulate comfort to those people who pass through these spaces. Some are of a more physical or sensory kind, such as a place for people to sit or something to look at. However, most ersatz elements relate to the connection of humans to nature. The place to sit or thing to look at becomes a place to look at nature or a representation therein.

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Project Statement: Altered Space

In this project I am attempting to create partial scenes, using a method similar to an architect beginning with a few architectural elements to design a building. The source imagery is created to closely match architectural photography of modern buildings. Photoshop is then used to abstract the images, remove the larger context and emphasize the design of major elements. The images are darkened significantly and a black background is used to add mystery and allow the shadow areas to fade into the background as if lit artificially at night or by theatrical stage lighting. Most images either combine elements or repeat a single form in an attempt to create a sense of depth in the two dimensional image.

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