Don’t we all have voyeuristic inclinations? As a child I always wondered what was happening beyond the closed doors and curtains of houses on my street. To this day, I am still fascinated by the silent scenes unfolding as you walk by the lit window of a stranger’s house at night. Who does not attempt to construct an elaborate story about their lives? We fill in the obscured scenes with our own words, actions, and emotions. A facial expression or gesture, or lack thereof, can determine what we read, how we understand it, and our desire to narrate their story. Who also doesn’t doubt the feelings and conventions at work during this process? Pictures from (Inside) are photographs based partly on those experiences as a child and as an adult filling out the hushed and concealed scenes in the windows. They are also based partly on my experiences of growing up in my family and my more recent experiences as a father and husband. All of the pictures are constructions. They are staged moments of an already experienced instant, or fictions, which centre exclusively on my immediate family. This series, which started over five years ago, has evolved as our relationships with each other have evolved. Pictures from (Inside) began more as a study of situations but has become more an interpretation of emotional connection and disconnection. This gives the photographs a distinct and, possibly disturbing, sense of intimacy and distance. The photographs have, in essence, gone from documenting the visual to attempting to understand the emotional complexities that come with even the most pedestrian activities of my family. The photographs that comprise Pictures from (Inside) are principally private and in-between moments. The moments are private not only because they relate to how we negotiate each other’s emotions but also because the feelings associated with them are mine. The viewers will have their own emotional-intellectual responses but they will be made according to their own experiences. The photographs are also in-between moments. Their reality is not based solely on the truths or fictions they tell but on the reality that falls somewhere between the photographs. The pictures never say anything for certain because a photograph never states anything unequivocally. The photographs, most often, depict us standing, hugging, sitting and lying around. Pictures from (Inside) speak about our desire to simply be with each other. They are also as much about our longing to understand our relationships as they are about negotiating an identity within a family structure that can sometimes stifle and, much of the time, allow us the security and strength to be individuals. The resulting images hopefully ask many more questions than they answer for the viewer. In the end, we are always weighing and negotiating our own experiences with and against those of others. Pictures from (Inside) speak to our voyeuristic impulses, our desire to understand things we can’t, and our longing to see the remnants of our lives.

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