Flora    2018, UV-cured pigment on vinyl and polycarbonate, mechanism, sync strobe, 47"x47"x4"

A motion-portrait of Flora Shallcross Muybridge, wife of pioneering photographer Eadweard Muybridge (popularly known as the Grandfather of Motion Pictures). Half his age, Flora savored the city’s nightlife and theater scene, eventually engaging in an intimate relationship with an adored actor. The two had a child who was easily hidden from Eadweard, who was often away for months shooting landscapes. Her lover was murdered by Eadweard, the child of their affair orphaned, and Flora died of what seemed like a broken heart. She was 24. Cut from her husband, lover, beloved San Francisco, and child, she wilted quickly.

Eadweard's Menagerie    2017, UV-cured pigment on polycarbonate, mechanism, sync strobe, 47"x47"x4"

Eadweard Muybridge, widely known as the Grandfather of Motion Pictures, revealed the hidden moments of human and animal locomotion with his hundreds of sequential photographic studies. While his male subjects hammer anvils, box, and ride horses, several of his female nudes pour buckets of water over each other, kiss, and fall onto mattresses, landing with buttocks presented. One hundred and twenty years before the pornographic Girls Gone Wild franchise launched, Muybridge directed nude women to perform exploitive actions in front of his array of cameras. In Eadweard’s Menagerie, I placed a collection of these sequences into little virtual boxes under the gaze of a giant Muybridge, who posed nude for a number of his own studies. I digitally smoothed the subjects’ motion, adding images to the sequences that never before existed, making them feel as if they might break free of their eternal subjugation and speak out in today’s #metoo milieu.

Empower      2017, UV-cured pigment on polycarbonate, 44"x44"x6"

A leader's rhetoric of hate empowers those with violent tendencies.