Views From the Pot
For Views From the Pot, I utilize the camera on an iPhone to explore the ways we use our smartphones to document and expose every aspect of our private lives. The format functions on multiple levels: it underscores the immediacy of the moment and satisfies a need for instant gratification, but also provides an outlet for exhibitionism through evolving social media. These new social spheres provide a distorted mirror for self-representation and an anchor for which our existence and lives are validated and reaffirmed.
In many ways, Views From the Pot is about my own struggle with these contradictory forces constantly at odds within me, the need to showcase every aspect of my private life and simultaneously rebel against these social constructs. I see the surfaces of the bathroom stall in front of me as the “anti-self-portrait”; when I do see my image reflected on a surface, it is often semi-obscured, in shadow, or seen through the markings of graffiti on a mirror. Other images within the series become abstract and depersonalized observations of a familiar space. The images are concealing as much as they are exposing my private life, for, in truth, all were taken with my pants down on public toilets.
