The White State is a “think project” about the nature of how we present political ideas in modern media. 

Each triptych was composed from a single photograph, the correct version of which sits in the center, in pale white.  The others, in red and blue, are composites of only the left and right sides of the subjects faces, mirrored against each other to form the illusion of a whole.

I created this project around the idea that, in the United States, we live increasingly in a world of political information based on an abstract color theory: Red versus Blue.

The major assumption of this paradigm is that ideas, like these primary color states, are by definition separate.  Red versus Blue is effectively a form of informational aparthied.

I hoped to present these pictures and the disorienting effect they have on the viewer as a tangible example of how, when only certain information is allowed to exist, it creates a distortion.  And by posing two arbitrary and opposite distortions side by side, demonstrate how they collude to obscure an image we are capable of recognizing as true.

I believe the reductive and polarizing methods used to create stories about major characters in politics has a similar, damaging effect on our ability to evaluate all kinds of information, not just pictures, and a consequent negative effect on our health as a democracy.

Feel free to send a comment and I will post it here on the site: communicate