I was raised with a mindset of being straddling between two worlds: the Puerto Rican and the North American cultures. Puerto Rico, the oldest colony in the world, constantly struggles to define its own identity. As a result, I question my own perceptions of reality. The conceptual approach of this series represents my perspective of reality, which is characterized by being blurred between reality and fiction.
By addressing the verisimilitude of photography and its relationship to reality, I reflect my own experience. I use photography’s closeness to reality to explore how images affect our perception of reality and vice versa. As a result of shifting the representation of an object through size, scale, and isolation from its typical context, the perception of the object also shifts. These photographs represent the opposite of what our perception inform us.
I offer this work to expand a conversation about modes of perception, and I ask the viewer to question the appearance of truth. Nevertheless, in the end, it is up to each of us to question our realities, how we construct them, and whether they are valid.
