D: While in residence with The Museum of Loss and Renewal, I enjoyed perusing many of the library’s photobooks and was intrigued by their unique forms, papers, sizes and various editorial couplings of text and images. I later realized that their materiality is a political statement - a claim to physical and intellectual space. I learned that photobooks are reasonably priced works of art and potentially contain a myriad of creative constructions, juxtapositions, and strategies that I will now explore and apply to my practice beyond the gallery space. 

Independent art publishing is a vital tool for creating on-line platforms and printed copies that can be easily disseminated by libraries, bookstores, art institutions and the artistic community. Publishing photobooks is a strategy for endurance. Following a theme or storyline, it creates tangible, distributable evidence of thought and resistance that in comparison with the temporary nature of a single exhibit or performance are more difficult to maintain over time. Publishing is also a gathering tool. It forges communities around shared concerns, creating networks of solidarity that are local and transnational. This transforms disparate individuals into a conscious collective, which is the foundation of any political movement.

            Three days before American Thanksgiving in November 2018, I met a friend to run the trail along the Rio Grande in Albuquerque, New Mexico. We met early that morning, dressed in layers of clothing, and our breath instantly froze in the wintery cold. As we clipped along the path in the world’s largest cottonwood forest, we saw a person that appeared to be asleep on the ground, in the dirt and leaves. We noticed the person; we thought it was a man; we decided to leave them alone. Nearly an hour later, we ran by again. This time we noticed that the person had not moved, so we approached. With more light in the day now, we noticed that it was an Indigenous woman. We attempted to rouse her, but she neither moved her body nor her voice. We called 911, and soon there were fire trucks and police cars. The woman was dead. They took our statements and asked us to leave the scene, suspecting foul play. Several days later, we learned that they dismissed the suspicion of foul play and concluded that she froze to death. Yet, there was violence at play: systemic violence (...)

D: My work lives in the haunted space between two forms of violence: the abstract, institutionalized threat emanating from the nuclear weapons’ research facility and the immediate, visceral trauma of homicides on the streets of Albuquerque, New Mexico. I navigate this landscape directly, visiting murder sites that often exist in the shadow created by the Sandia Laboratory’s fenced boundary. Photographic witnessing is the core of my process, and it dictates where, what and how I approach a geographic location and its artistic presentation, from the chosen medium to its final form as a publication.

The choice of photo monotype collage is not incidental; it is the conceptual engine of the work. The medium is the message.

Collage is the action of designed proximity. The medium allows me to visually argue a connection that systems of power work hard to keep separate. It makes tangible the invisible shockwaves that travel from the covert labs down into the city's arteries, suggesting a shared pathology of violence.