"In my photographs, I cast myself in a series of staged self-portraits. Each photograph depicts a semi- artificial world which is simultaneously humorous and horrific. I transform myself using theatrical elements such as manipulative lighting, elaborate make-up and makeshift costumes, combined with digital manipulation of the final product. My characters address the social conventions of age as well as gender by embodying neutered childhood myths and exploring the awkward journey toward adulthood. The photographs are snapshots from a nonsensical narrative derived from disordered cultural fragments of countless stories and myths which I arbitrarily fuse together. The childlike, vulnerable and idiosyncratic nature of my work creates predicaments that strive to provoke empathy in the viewer. The artificiality of the characters and events lends a fairy-tale quality to the images. Scenes that would normally be considered threatening, dangerous, or repulsive are revealed to be more complex than they initially appear.

I recently have begun work on a new series in which I play more than one character within a single photo. Through digital manipulation, I am able to clone myself and create scenarios in which I act out childhood incidents such as fight scenes, first kisses, and deranged play dates. These works are simultaneously rooted in nostalgia and science fiction.

While hinting at the past and early Freudian developmental stages of youth, they also refer to new medical and technological breakthroughs in fertility drugs and gene cloning with biting cynicism and humor. Taking narcissistic fantasies one step further into the realm of the impossible and the absurd, the characters actually interact with their mirror images. Although many of them are engaged in spitting, licking, peeing or fighting, their deceptive beauty, esthetic content, and composition soften the more dramatic and gross elements in the work to inspire sympathy as well as fear."