I learned to see in the San Francisco area where I was born and raised, but I left at 19 and never went back. The color and light of northern California informs my entire worldview, alternately illuminating and haunting my dreams.

This long-term project explores personal states of mind and emotion in relation to landscape and light. Working with friends and acquaintances, I invent pictures for the camera on site in real time, using the visual and psychological elements each situation provides.

Activities vary according to the interests and ideas of the participants; we loosely arrange the scenes. I look for elusive moments between the ordinary and the heroic, with innuendo of desire, transgression, guilt and redemption.

Many of my influences have been straight white men long dead, or much older than me. I am particularly interested in reworking their visions and ideas from my own viewpoint as a contemporary queer female artist.

I use a large-format view camera and negative film, a slow and deliberate method of image-making. Individuals may pose briefly for each exposure, but none of the work is pre-conceived or staged in advance. Instead, we construct and deconstruct as we go, like actors or dancers developing new gestures or phrases.

I see these images as momentary displays, reflecting a sustained period of uncertainty. They are neither portraits nor documents; we are both nowhere and anywhere. The question looms: what now?