Can You Tell Me How the West was Won

Can You Tell Me How The West Was Won is a series of collages that looks at the spirit of exploration and the complicated notion of Manifest Destiny. As it was written, it was that pioneering spirit that made America great as a young nation came to be born. But the passive telling of this story belies a complexity that would have serious ramifications throughout the history of our country up until today. By juxtaposing portraits of unknown cowboys from the American West over top of portraits of the Apollo Astronauts, I am essentially obscuring their identities, in order to shift focus from individual personality to the larger, effects of exploration, imperialism and expansion on the collective subconscious. I seek to create a conversation driven by viewers in response to these collages and the play between the formal anomalies of each found photo as they become exploited to create an altogether new narrative based on visual experience.