artist statement for my work in pont aven

I am interested in exploring the meaning of personal relationship in today’s contemporary culture, and the interactions we have with each other.  My work expresses my feelings towards losing the capacity for genuine intimacy and commitment in interpersonal relationships. If this is true, it suggests that individuals may become something like an accessory to others in false relationships believed to be authentic. I am fascinated with how social interactions and intimate relationships have changed with the introduction of new technologies that offer new methods of communication such as email, text messaging, and services like facebook, myspace, linkedin and youtube, many of which remove people from the kind of direct interpersonal interaction that facilitates authentic intimacy. I question these moments and am intrigued by images of intimate moments that are put out into this new public domain for all to see, and also the consequence of these images upon personal relationships.  I draw from various sources when choosing images to work with, from antique pictures of past eras to images I find on the Internet of my own generation. I am interested in documenting the differences between past and present relationships, not only how they have been portrayed through photographs, but how these images differ from each other.