This Is Not A Backdrop

(2008-2016)

THIS IS NOT A BACKDROP encounters landscapes alive with alienation, intimacy, possibility.

Walls, fences, railings, bridges, stairways: at every turn, we obey or trespass stop signs, keep an eye out for wild rivers, open seas, sunsets ablaze, clouds like flowers tumbling overhead. From Brighton Beach and Santa Monica to Barcelona, Dublin, and coastal communities in Basque Country and Western Ireland, the series captures anonymous faces in the midst of life happening — background characters brought to the fore as they encounter windows, crosswalks, fences, docks, far-off horizons.

Taken from 2008 through 2016, these images focus on faces of quiet witness to reveal architectures of confinement, fantasies of escape, and everyday acts of voyeurism that trespass boundaries and connect bodies through the invisible web of the 21st-century city.