WHAT IS FOUND THERE recontextualizes images from 20+ years of story assignments, NGO commissions, and personal projects, challenging the story hierarchies in the dominant paradigms I worked within as an international photojournalist. This process explores the roles of power and representation, agency and authorship, truth, intuition, and personal perspective in photojournalistic work. I’m asking how witnessing (in both senses of the word) might be deconstructed, reimagined, and shared to vitalize new ways of knowing an infinitely diverse yet inextricably interconnected world.

Each polyptych syncretically combines images made at different times, in different places, and with different intentions. While the assignment and commissioned images document recognizable and familiar social or environmental issues—and so may still evoke literal meditations on ways we live on the planet and with each other—the manipulations of the surfaces and deliberate creation of new objects (hand-mounting; painting and drawing on the images; and surreal compositions in poetic collages with variable physical relief) prioritize the symbolic language and subjective nature of photography, and an exploration of relationships in place of documentation of facts. There is no place, date, or caption information provided, nor are the personal photographs annotated in any way. They are not meant to be evidence, explanation, ironic juxtaposition, or to provide specific answers. These works instead hint at the subconscious reactions and inspirations represented in the moments photographed, while embracing the viewer’s agency and sovereignty—and biases and baggage—inviting them to discover their own novel narratives and personal meanings. The shared process engages the photographer, the photographs, and the photographed, with the viewers themselves as they surface their own realizations and truths about themselves, their place in the world beyond themselves, and the interconnectedness of human experience.