Photographic Palimpsests

A palimpsest is a surface that has been written or imaged, erased or obscured, and used again, leaving traces of its earlier life visible beneath the surface. My Photographic Palimpsests, (2024 – ongoing), revisit the experimental photographic practice of my youth. In my earlier work I created analog montages by sandwiching overexposed Ektachrome transparencies in Gepe slide mounts to generate internegatives and make C-prints.

These new works translate an analog creative impulse into a contemporary process. I combine images of my artwork with photographs of textures, natural forms, light, and fragments of the observable world. Layering and digital manipulation dissolve the boundaries between artwork and photograph, interior and exterior. The resulting images do not document the world so much as reconstruct it—creating heightened, dreamlike fields that give form to an internal universe of memory, mood, and imagination. Though deeply personal, I believe these emotional states are widely shared.