Nel ( from the series "We're All from Somewhere")

Alexander Thebez

I have always been fascinated with the everyday. Through my work, I strive to capture quiet but evocative moments that feature common spaces and the people in my life. Having spent most of my time in both United States and Southeast Asia, I often struggle with a sense of displacement and isolation. I attempt to reconcile my peripatetic personal life into a coherent narrative using photographic still and moving images. The content of my images is often diaristic. In my work, I combine staged portraits and snapshots to describe relationships between myself and the people in my images. Heavily influenced by film, I am more concerned with the stories that come from the juxtaposition of images instead of the power of an individual image, whether they are sequenced in a book, arranged in a website, or edited into a movie. For me, the drive to create work comes from my need to negotiate emotional and geographic distance between myself and the individuals in my life. By documenting the everyday, I hope to explore the emotional consequences of a physical and geographic sense of displacement, or maybe even catching a glimpse of pathos in the mundane.