Statement: Does a portrait descibe the sitter or the artist? Richard Avedon said "A photographer depends upon another person to complete his picture. The subject imagined, which in a sense is me, must be discovered in someone else willing to take part in a fiction he cannot possibly know about",but how much of that statement is true? Can we see ourselves in others? Are the best mirriors the people who are closest to us? Can a photograph go beyond the surface to describe someone?

I photograph my wife (Virginia) because she is the person closest to me, and while these photographs are not documents of our relationship: the photographs are informed by the above questions and my desire to visualize an aspect of that relationship. These photographs are about the way people appear when they alone or in between moments of inactivity and reflection: states of transition, momentarily withdrawn from the world and the person in the room with them. The photographs are also about desire and alienation; the ways in which people share an intimate space but are also separated from each other. I am interested in describing the physical and psychological beauty in things that are freqently overlooked: the way lingerie is filled with hope and expectation for physical intimacy; or the evocative quality of light on someones skin as they sit on their bed before a day of activity. These are the things that I attempt to describe in my photographs of Virginia.