These are a group of photographs I have made since 2006, traveling to as many as 20 different countries in Asia, Europe, and North America. I was compelled by an intense desire to make these photographs without being able to articulate a reason, but hindsight placed them together as a cohesive whole in the processes of revisiting my photographic archive from my travels. 
These pictures include the iconic sights, tourist attractions, and sometimes simple, ordinary places. The tourist attraction or landmarks, however, do not play a significant role in my photographs. Rather, I focus on the space that the objects or figures inhabit and the discontent that exists in the viewer from that space.
This project stems from my nomadic existence. When I am in transition I feel at home, rather than when I am in one certain space. My home is my camera. Do you always have to know to feel comfortable? Is it possible to feel familiar without knowing a space, having never seen it before? Or is it entirely an illusion?
We all demand some sense of comfort when we are introduced to foreign places. We seek familiarity. The relationship between the viewer and the space within the photograph is not just about the space itself, recognition of that space, it is more about how human beings relate to the space. It does not give you a sense of familiarity.
Each piece within this body of work creates its own tension, between the familiarity of commons sights or tourist attractions and a sense of abnormality. The abnormality if created in part by the realization that the place at which you are looking is actually unknown to you and in part by a feeling of the photograph being staged. These photographs play with the concept of surreal realism and force the viewer into a state of suspended disbelief, which because of the static nature of a photograph, is also uncomfortable or jarring. The viewer is left waiting, as though caught in the breath before an event. 
The subtly of this abnormality screams in the disconnect between the space and the figures within the space, between the space and the viewer, between the space and the photographer, and also between the figure within the space and the viewer. Because of the nature of each of the figures, the viewer is unable to make a connection with them.
I focus on the interplay between familiarity or the concept of home and the unknown, unfamiliar spaces. I deliberately use a significant amount of detail, a deep depth of field. The foreground of these photographs is always as sharp as the background. They all include large empty spaces to invite the viewer in and many also are taken from higher perspective to show more of the land-space.
