Reveries & Other Fantasies

These photographs set diorama miniatures against elements of southern architecture. The images refer to ideas of place, belonging, refuge, escape and fantasy. The space is a reverie tinged with nostalgia and wistfulness for what never was; an illusion that seeks and hopes to become real.

They present the viewer with inhabited landscapes that are devoid of human figures but full of their traces. This fictional landscape is anchored to a determined place; it dwells in a recognizable geography, a romanticized American South.

Formally the work presented here uses a reversal of photographic custom where the image represented is not scaled down to fit within the print, but is instead magnified. The miniatures photographed stand in for ordinary objects — lampposts, trees, and benches — which are archetypes that can be recognized at a glance. The imperfections of the miniatures are amplified when photographed and presented larger than life. This distances them from the “real.” An otherwise minute flaw seems charged with meaning, and a subtle dissonance is presented for the viewer to grapple with and to resolve. The model becomes a signifier for something that is now miss-read, displaced or never was. The objects are easy to read, but something in the details undermines the plausibility of the image.