‘i wish i were an astronaut…’

“i wish i were an astronaut...” is a series of photographic/sculptural works about loss and loneliness. In this series of photographs I’ve built home made space exploration equipment in an effort to explore my hometown of Dayton, Ohio a rust belt city with a crumbling downtown and vast areas that are abandoned due to suburban flight. I set out “discovering” my hometown in a full space suit in an effort to tell a a theatrical story with no beginning or end. The act of exploration itself and the photos that result imply a loneliness, a sadness, and an emptiness that I feel in reaction to the city in which I grew up. The photos themselves are simple representations utilizing twilight to emphasize a sense of nostalgia and a touch of drama to what might be considered otherwise simple performance documentation photographs.