There is more here than we can see. There always is, and always has been. We are in a fascinating time, a time where people question reality daily. The specter of artificial intelligence and disinformation looms large in a way that we haven’t seen before. Even with this lurch toward non-human fabricated images, the mystical and unreal has always been with us. Images have been manipulated and altered since the birth of photography. The crux of infrared photography that fascinates me is how real it actually is, in a literal sense despite seeming false. Whereas an artificially generated image is a complete fabrication, a hallucinated quasi digital art of some sort; infrared photography takes very real light that we physically cannot see and reveals it to us. If that isn’t magic, then I don’t know what is. I hope this work, Kindling for Reality, brings back a renewed interest in the infrared photography medium and reminds the photography community that despite hundreds of years of technological advancement we have only begun to scratch the photographic medium's surface. 

After returning from 4 months in India for a Ramapo College study abroad program in 2016, I had taken over 3,000 different photos and with little idea what to do with them, I briefly spoke with some of my professors about having a gallery. But time moved faster than I anticipated; it wasn't until about 8 months later, in my final semester at Ramapo College, that I revisited the idea of presenting the images in a gallery setting. On March 5th 2017 these images saw the light of day for a brief pop up gallery at Ramapo College. The second showing of You and Me was in The Madison Public Library.

You and Me, at its heart, is about the interactions I had with people and the interactions you the viewer will have looking at the faces in these images. And the idea that no matter where you live or who you are, we share the same ideals. We are people living our lives, unaware of what those passing by us are thinking, doing, and feeling. How do my subjects feel the moment the shutter closes? We will never know. Hard as we may try to explain what we see, the moment captured is the only information that is presented. And yet, maybe the answer to this question is your response, as a viewer, to these images and how they make you feel.

Now I invite you, dear reader, to lose yourself in these images and even if for a moment imagine that you are the man, woman, or child looking out at the world through these pictures. Look back at yourself with kindness, for we are not all that different, you and me.

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