The Hand

The Hand began as a build. With the Thomas Dammann award and a background in construction, I built a full-scale set from scratch — a yellow room, a stained-glass window, a wall of pinned photographs — and lit it for a photoshoot.

It's made in the spirit of Gregory Crewdson's staged tableaux: taking control of the vernacular, everyday world and rebuilding it to camera to control the story rather than find it.

The plan was to paint it. But the photograph came back already painterly, so I showed it as a photograph — two framed, asymmetrical versions. The inverse of the rest of the practice: building reality until the camera couldn't tell.