In this work, I explore the ways in which the world of video games acts as a method of escape into inhabitable alternate worlds. I photograph scenes from video games using 19th century processes, such as wet plate collodion, in order to recontextualize these digital, non-physical scenes into a physical photograph. For many of us, the digital worlds we imaginatively inhabit feel real. These photographs function to make those worlds materially tangible, which allows the viewer to feel unencumbered by disbelief.
My work is about an escape from the difficulties of life. With the photographic processes I use and the games I play, everything works in tandem as an attempt to escape to a different time, somewhere I’d rather be than here and now, but that has never really existed. To me it is a survey of these worlds, something I view as a literal extension of my own reality. Photography itself has always been about the creation of a world for me, about creating documents of a world I see through my eyes or one that I imagine.
