SHINE LIKE THAT


Still-life.The THESIS:

Objects as images, images of objects, or objects that are images.

People for the camera, objects on display. Objects for my eyes.

I want that. I want to be that.

I desire through images.

All I see, I am.


Photography. The TRICK: The construction of a false truth. What existed only for the camera. What will never be again. Photography takes any subject and transforms it into that untouchable object. A past perfect fixed on a surface with no depth. Just a pure image.


They represent being there:

smoking that first cigarette,

your first kiss,

having a Coke with you.

The object of desire itself.

Blurry. But concrete.

Scrolling. Morning coffee. Commute.

A magazine (rare).





All I see is images—one after the other.

They flash in front of me, then vanish.

Before I can feel, the next image is already forcing itself in.



They are all different, but I have already seen them.


I get dizzy.

Even my friend poses like that guy with the white underwear.




Some sink in, fuse with my memory.

They come back with power.




Make me stop scrolling.




An EPIPHANY: A feeling of presence.

I look again.



And again.



A strange recognition: desire without name.

Between the noise, a few notes shine.

A tone, a mood, a flash of specificity.

Chance crossed our paths. Now I LOOK.



I collect these images.

Wanting to make them happen again.

Extract. Copy. Paste. Borrow. Re-stage.

Old cameras. New cameras. My selfie. Your selfie.




RANDOM images,

To build my intimate story:

a documentary of an imaginary life.

A convergence of photographic genres, types, tropes—

fused, entangled, staged.

A personal–impersonal feed.




Multivalence.



The photographs want to be

an ad, a meme,

your Instagram story,

a Nan Goldin image of her lover.




The contemporary image must be consciously produced—

playing into the lie of being a snapshot.

Accidental, but curated.

I photograph my friend like she’s in an American Apparel ad.

The lights warm her skin.




Constructed intimacy.



The poses, lights, objects, gestures—

borrowed from other photographs.

Making new images that show what they are:

copies of themselves.



Aware of their sameness.

Images that approximate how we consume, desire,

disappear through our eyes.


Amalgamations.

Echoes of every photograph.

The already-seen.

Subjects and objects collapse into one.

An image.







The CLICHÉ.

A Coke again.

A black and red basketball.

A lover in bed.

A shiny pack of Newports—asking to be smoked, held.

ME, YOu, IT.




People like mannequins.

Me in third person.

Wearing my aspirations. Holding my lust.

The photograph makes them perfect.

No flesh. Pure shine.

Immortal and sexy. A hyperreal body.




Melancholy for what could have been.

Longing. Perfection.




Desire is perfect.

That I know I could never have.

The ideal, like a photograph, always out of reach.



The place where I want to be.

Wear that. Shine like that.

My desire is not mine.

Like my name—it’s inherited.

Images created it.

Images feed it.

Satisfy and spoil it.

Make it hungrier.

Like porn.

A simulation.

Not quite the thing itself.

Too much.

Flawed in its excess.

My life—a life performed for the camera.

I belong to the image-world.

The machine does.

My body turned object

I objectify it too.

Upload it. Sell it.

Try to become THAT.

The object of desire.

Living inside the world of perfection and ideal.

Maybe there—

we will be happy.


Maybe there—

we will find bliss.




BLISS.

Five letters.

Perfect happiness.

Great joy.

Too much. Drowns me.




Photographs, words, ideas—many meanings in one picture.

Just an image.

A black stain over white paper.

A blurry picture of what I’ve seen.




Expressed with four letters:

SWAG.




A whole. Nothing. An abstraction.

Words are images too.




They’re my language.

I wobble, wabble between the two—

like a baby learning to walk.

None of them are it.

But they get close.

And when they do—

it’s so wonderful.



GOAL:

Repeat. Accumulate.




Desire annihilated by excess.

Overflowing. Exploding.

And we are left alone.



Now.

Found it.




The image—an image that already exists




A shared feeling.




A recognition.That face.



ME, YOu, IT.




We found each other.                                                                                                                                              The place?                                                                                                                                            

The image