Null Reference Contact Printer reframes documentary images from objects created in 2012 and then in 2013 into new striking works in and of themselves. These works capture the magic of analogue darkroom techniques by putting forth the play of light between image and negative, and surface. The series shows that photography and our perception of things, including the world and truth, can be altered significantly due to the photographer's choices, even by the slimmest of means: ability to procure a photographic device, choice to photograph and of subject, cropping, and output. In an age in which we are constantly seeing altered and unreal images that seem real through ai, this series shows that we were never really seeing the truth after all. It shows that the perceived connection between photography and the truth was always assumed, but never there.
By using a reference to something which is foreign to our common mental database of objects in the real world (though it does indeed exist) the works further alert the viewer that something is afoot: these images aren't purely abstract images as they may at first seem. Each work is entitled Null Reference with the subtitle Contact Printer which references the new forms and objects that come from the divergence of initial inspiration and reproductive sharing. The origins of Null Reference stem from the globalized, technological world we live in today, referring to computer programming language in which NullReferenceExceptions are thrown when one tries to access a reference variable that isn’t referencing any object - hence, it is null. Distanced from their referent, these images become new visual input, new ways of considering our world. In this way, they also exist simultaneously as of something and nothing.
This series continues to provoke conversion and disrupts past sold discourse that shaped our perception of any photography as truthful and unaltered. It also brings forth a larger conversation that pure truths do not exist. We all have different perceptions of same, shared experiences as we are unique creatures, with unique thoughts and at different stages in life. Truth really is infinite and solely true to each individual themself.