REDUCTION TO ABSURDITY 

The project concerns object representation, visual perception, and truth through photography, posing philosophical inquiries. Found geometry within objects and its translation into image form serve as the driving forces behind this series.

However, what is geometry without context and language beyond an abstract notion of arbitrary order and situation? Shapes hold societal functions, yet their appearances vary and are constrained by principles of human consensus and our penchant for order, classification, and taxonomy. What unites them all is their thingness and the act of photographic representation.

Abstraction seems insufficient when grappling with photographic representation. Instead, the project employs reduction and simplification of objects and places to explore the limits of their representation. It presents creative parallels that navigate the delicate balance between placeness (Relph 1976) and objecthood (Fried 1967, Smithson 1968, Voorhies 2017) through framing, vantage point, color, spatial relationships, and titling.

Why have we collectively agreed on assigning specific shapes to things? And how do these things acquire their names? Is it more plausible for a door, for instance, to be a parallelogram rather than a triangle? If it were a triangle, would that be deemed absurd? What about color? Does it matter if the door is red, yellow, or brown? Who determines this, and whose opinion holds sway? Is it absurd to suggest that nothing truly appears (or is represented) until it is given a shape and a name?