September 11

“Urban Legends” is an in-progress body of work in which I explore the rapidly changing urban environment of my neighborhood in Austin, TX and the signifiers that characterize the cultural identity of the place. Extracting, then printing slightly varied iterations of the details from my environment before they disappear to construction and real estate developments recontextualizes these fleeting urban relics, inviting the viewer to experience them in a different form from the physical objects in the streets they once were.  The images intentionally reveal marks of their past - dust, scratches, warping and other degradation as a way of memorializing their individual story lines. Having a high volume of iterative images comprised together into a mural consisting of 3 66”x48” panels challenges a viewer to effectively take a closer look — similarly evoking the way one might glaze over from the amount of information perpetuated in their landscape. “Urban Legends” explores the function of photography as a reproducing and preserving agent of history and the nature of urban evolution.