Starting with several different interpretations of the trace, I unified them into a multi-layered idea, centered around the idea of objects as traces of a person’s interaction with and impact on the space around them. Initially, the possibilities of long exposures captured my imagination, and I experimented with the ability of extended exposure to create “literal” traces. I wanted to avoid the temptation of creating gimmicky or cliched photos, so I used long exposures to move objects or myself around a space. The long exposure limited me to a space in which I could easily shoot with a tripod and control lighting; thus, my home provided an excellent technical and conceptual setting. The objects we place, rearrange, remove, in our homes are both the most obvious and most overlooked traces of our impact on the space we inhabit.
Usually, we evaluate the objects we put in our homes—furniture, food, memorabilia, whatever—for their aesthetic or functional value. By portraying these objects in a state of movement or transparency, I tried to draw attention away from their surface function and towards their role as documenters of our interactions with the space around us. When someone moves into a new home, they start with a completely empty space—wiped clear of any traces of previous residents—and proceed to document the reality of their existence and interaction in that space. That said, I did not want to treat these photos as forensic “clues” of the lives of a space’s residents, creating a guessing game for the viewer. Instead, I wanted to make apparent this interaction of inhabitant and space, mediated and recorded by the object. Rather than photographing “interior decoration”—which conjures up images of Martha Stewart and department stores—I wanted to photograph interior “architecture”: the transformation of empty, meaningless interior space into a built environment with meaning and function.
