Having lived in the same small midwestern town of Kirksville, Missouri for my entire life, I often waver back and forth between viewing my surroundings as mundane or bursting with potential. Even though my surroundings often inspire me, I simultaneously feel trapped in a never ending cycle of familiarity. Through photography I am able to take the mundane and manipulate it into something new and captivating. I start by documenting familiar places in my hometown through the lens of my camera. I then process each roll of film and intuitively choose negatives to enlarge and alter. Each one of my silver gelatin prints aims to break through the traditional restrictions of the darkroom and my environment by expanding the parameters of the photographic medium. 

Traditionally the darkroom follows a step by step process, leaving room for creative freedom mainly in the negatives themselves and the contrast at which they are printed. In this body of work, I step beyond these traditional boundaries by folding the silver gelatin paper before the negative is projected or folding the negatives themselves to make contact prints. I find that the convergence of these multiple methodologies heightens the potential for conversation about the ways we view and interact with our familiar surroundings –depicted in the subject matter of each image. By physically altering the familiar through the photographic process, I draw attention to perception of the everyday.