In my series titled Elegy, I draw upon memories to examine my relationship with the cultural and physical landscape of my youth. I was raised for the most part in a town of 700 people in rural Idaho and felt like an outsider after discovering I was gay in my early adolescence.
During my formative teenage years, I was faced with a choice, to conform to the traditional masculine culture of the Western United States – one defined by violence and destruction – or to run away and create my own sense of belonging. It is through this struggle that my relationship with the idea of place emerges, and I question the persistence of the mythology of the West. It is this tension between ecstasy and fear that I hope to convey in my image-making.
