My studio got a shipment of damaged mats. I couldn’t use them for my client work, and they wouldn’t work with my fine art pieces. The corners were a little beat up, but they had purpose. I couldn’t just get rid of them. I knew they could be beautiful, despite their flaws.

The Pages
I’ve spent countless hours poring over forgotten pages, finding things that speak to me, make me laugh, or creep me out a little. These books are all second-hand, the more worn the better. Some copies have been so damaged that the bookstore just gave them to me. Still, their pages are filled with the same richness as when they were new. When I find text old or obscure enough that I can’t find a secondhand book, I print it new so that its life can continue beyond its days in publication.

The Purpose
My career as a boudoir photographer is all about showing beauty, occasionally to those who have forgotten they have it. This is no different, just a new medium.

The Public Domain
Two of my projects – Ripped from the Spines and Ripped from the Screens – are a celebration of our culture’s collective consciousness that exists in the public domain. These are works that built the foundation of the stories and art and movies and even colloquial phrases that we use and see all around us, but rarely acknowledge from where they came. This “Edifice” (as Saul Bass described it) is worth remembering and belongs to all of us. By creating original work that highlights our culture’s rich past, I hope it can bring new understanding to where we have already been and how we got where we are.