My body of work is a blend of fiction and biography but my subject matter deals with what is familiar and intimate: the family body, personal rituals, and the way we experience and remember the passing of time. The composition of the photographs is meant to order what is essentially chaotic. I use clutter, messiness, and layering to obscure and animate these ordinary spaces so that they become allegorical in some way. 

As a group the photographs begin to speak about empathy with one’s kin, the closeness of a family, and the experience of childhood- but they are not entirely documentary in style. The resulting pictures are a mix of both observed and staged moments. At times I direct my subjects to recreate past gestures. In “Jacob at 8 Years Old” I try to evoke the dress, backdrop, and pose of my grandfather’s old studio portraits from his time as a young man in Puerto Rico. Yet other times, I might ask them to imagine a new gesture; I create physical masks and backdrops by hand with which they interact as in “Boss(y)”. 

I photograph my younger siblings like so many before me who have been fascinated by children and their developing selves. However in a culture that focuses disproportionately on the socialization of girls and the expression of girlhood, I feel my work is different in that it begins to create an honest and sensitive description of boyhood. And while this work is firmly within the tradition of those who have documented home as a place of origin, I must acknowledge that mine is a family of mixed heritages and a socioeconomic background that is less often documented. These are things that are suggested, perhaps by a toe poking through a torn sock as in “Diptych #1” , or a winter clothesline as in “Clothesline #1”.

As a photographer my impulse has always been to create a frame around the most humble and ordinary of details so that the viewer will grant them the same generosity in looking as they would something more elegant.