Process
Every piece begins as a photograph and ends as something the original image could never have anticipated. Between those two points is a loop, an iterative cycle of physical and digital transformation that accumulates texture, meaning, and decay with every pass.
The process is physical and digital simultaneously. Each state informs and degrades the next until the distinction between original and reproduction dissolves.
1. Photograph
The source material. A portrait, a figure, raw data captured as the starting point for everything that follows. The photograph is the seed.
2. Digital Edit
The photograph is deconstructed digitally. Layers are separated, elements rearranged, the composition broken and rebuilt in ways the camera never intended. This is the first pass of collage, the first transformation.
3. AI-Assisted Generation
AI tools sometimes enter the process here. Sometimes later. Sometimes not at all. When they do, the output is fed back into the loop like any other input.
4. Print
The digital file becomes physical. Printed at scale, the image gains weight, texture, presence. This is the moment the work crosses from the screen into the world.
5. Physical Reconstruction
The printed image is worked by hand. Torn, cut, painted over, layered with ink or acrylic, reassembled. Sometimes the intervention is subtle. Sometimes the original is barely recognizable. Accidents become texture. The physical collage carries every mark of its making.
6. Scan
The physical collage is placed face-down on a flatbed scanner. The scanner sees what the eye doesn't: every fiber, every shadow, every imperfection the hands left behind. The analog becomes digital again, carrying the residue of its physical life.
7. Repeat
The cycle begins again. Print, paint, scan, print. Tear something, rebuild it, scan it, print it, paint over it. Each iteration adds another layer. Some works pass through this loop three times. Some pass through it ten. The process continues until further iteration would subtract rather than add.
8. Final Print
The finished work is output as a giclée print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308gsm, archival matte paper that holds detail without gloss or interference. Each print is hand-signed and numbered in a limited edition.
The result sits somewhere between photography, collage, printmaking, and digital art. It is confrontational and layered in ways that resist easy categorization. The physical collage exists somewhere behind the digital print, and the print exists somewhere ahead of the collage. Both are the work. Neither is more real than the other.