The Tsushima Cyanotypes:

In the spring of 2020, just like the rest of us, my whole world shrunk to the confines of a bedroom. In an effort to escape, or to at least feel like I was a part of something, I started watching my roommate plat video games. I became especially interested in one title, The Ghost of Tsushima, in which players roleplay as a samurai defending his island from a 13th century Mongol invasion. I became totally consumed by the beauty of the island which the characters live on, and began spending my days taking making screenshots to photograph the virtual world I was becoming a part of.

I wanted to share these experiences with others just like I had my “real-world” photograph, and began looking for ways of altering the image in a way that felt suspended between the virtual and the analog. Through many, many experiements, I found a technique of printing cyanotypes that could translate exactly how I wanted it to feel. Cyanotype is an very old style of photographic printmaking from the 19th century, you may have heard them referred to as “blueprints” before. The result are a series of over 30 dreamlike portals, all looking into a world both which exists simultaneously in real and imagined space. I hope these portals serve as a springboard to make viewers consider the often very authentic effects of a simulated experience.