I was born in New York City in 1982, and grew up in the suburbs of Central New Jersey. I began photographing in my early teens and studied photography formally at the School of Visual Arts and the International Center of Photography. My photographic education has also been supplemented from having taken a diversity of workshops at The Maine Workshops Center in Rockport, Maine and the Woodstock Center of Photography in New York.
In my photographic work I explore a variety of subject matters. I have done long term projects documenting families, examining and observing their bonds, and their exterior and interior lives. As photographers many of us strive to find and stake a claim that our work represents a common and universal language, hoping that others can see our intentions and understand the reasons for our image making. Yet it is not possible for all photographs to depict and mirror a universal experience of being alive and for others to understand why we made our decisions from the photographs we captured and created. However I hope that others can find moments of relation and recognition in my images of people even if those lives are different from their own. That a viewer can guise an authenticity and empathy reflected back through my photographs is my objective.
My camera has also been directed at my own life, as well as inward through my self portraiture which has been a fixture of my practice since I was fourteen. In addition I experiment with the Holga camera working within a cinematic and intuitive framework. I chose this kind of experimental approach because I want to play and engage with intuition, surprise and a day dreaminess in image making as well as challenge my expectations of how the image will transpire.
The characteristics and themes that thread my artistic practice, from the mediums of photography, video/film, writing and poetry, are interpersonal connections, chance, intention, self awareness, imaginings, and longings.
Self portrait (2024), Art work by Robert Blake