the origins of fotoplay

Most projects actually incubate for a long time. Days, weeks, decades. This is true of my Fotoplay book. While it became a clear collection of pages and chapters this past spring, I’ve been swimming around in this work for at least ten years, since the time I created my Percent-for-Art commissions.  The source of inspiration then was the same as it is now: children’s drawings. To create my work, I visited elementary school classrooms and asked kids to draw for me. Sometimes I presented a wish-list (cars, boats, animals…) and other times I simply began with one of my photographs as a prompt for a setting. Either way, I always left the room with a load of treasure:

When incorporating the childrens’ work into my own, I added color and tone, shadows and light. I played with scale and gesture. My interest was to create depth and dimension, while bringing the two realms – hand-drawn imagery and photographic imagery – closer and closer together…