The Picture Looks Back
Kyoto and New York City
Every subject returns the camera’s gaze, turning scrutiny back on the viewer and questioning how we judge vulnerability, privacy, dignity and agency.
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These galleries hold photos from my archive that present a visual examination of the United States. The images engage with themes of cultural identity, social dynamics, natural and urban environments, and explore the relationship between individuals and their surroundings.
1. United States-focused studies
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On Forty-Seventh: Photographs from New York’s Diamond District
A photographic study of New York’s Diamond District and the uneasy overlap of skilled work, salesmanship, status and street life on West 47th Street.
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American Backyard: Photographs in Central Park
More than a decade-long photographic study of Central Park as New York’s shared backyard—a public landscape shaped by leisure, labor, intimacy, ritual and performance.
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The City Behind the Wall
The City Behind the Wall examines temporary urban barriers as accidental frames, revealing hidden layers of a city undergoing constant transformation.
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Times Square: Dreams and Desperation
A long-term street study of Times Square as an American dream factory, where global spectacle collides with labor, historical erasure and street-level desperation.
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Free Luigi Mangione
Luigi Mangione’s federal arraignment, capturing supporters, critics, costumes, protests, and media spectacle outside court as the high-profile case evolves toward trial.
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September 11, New York
Photographs of the September 11 anniversary in New York, shaped by my memories of watching the attacks on television in Australia.
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J’Ouvert: Caribbean Identity and Culture in Brooklyn
Caribbean traditions take shape in Brooklyn’s streets at the annual J’Ouvert festival in Crown Heights.
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Planted Matter
A photographic study of plants moving through New York City, tracing how care, commerce, transport and abandonment shape nonhuman life in urban space.
2. Multi-location studies featuring United States
The Subject at Hand
Melbourne, New York City, and Phnom Penh
A photographic study of hands that emerge from the background of street scenes and become the subject through repetition, attention and sequencing.
Oral Fixation
A photographic study of people of all ages touching their mouths, tracing a small, often unconscious gesture repeated across public life.
Pairs: Repetition and Différance
Melbourne, New York City, and Tokyo
A photographic sequence exploring how repetition, relation and différance produce meaning between images.
The Father
Melbourne, New York City, and Tokyo
A photographic study of how fatherhood becomes visible in public through carrying, protection, resemblance, discipline and control.
The Lover
Melbourne, New York City, and Sydney
Love, desire, romance, and vulnerability flowing through the city.
Nailshop
Melbourne, New York City, Phnom Penh, Sydney, and Tokyo
Fingernails as bodily edges where grooming, self-fashioning and social judgment meet.
Hair
Melbourne, New York City, Phnom Penh, and Tokyo
Hair explored as a site where personal identity intersects with public space.
Act Your Age
Melbourne, New York City, and Tokyo
When age stops looking the way we expect, the photograph catches us deciding what the difference means.
Believe Me
A photographic study of certainty as public performance, where faith, fraud and persuasion compete for another person’s attention.
Oral Intervention
Melbourne, New York City, and Phnom Penh
Fleeting, intimate gestures of touching mouths in public spaces.
Intimate Intervention
Gestures of touch transforming shared environments into sites of intimacy.
A Lungful of Air
New York City and Sydney
How substances shape the atmosphere of the city and the psyche of its inhabitants
Floral Footpath
Kyoto, Melbourne, and New York City
Flowers as cultural messengers and moving gestures through the city.
Walking Wounded
New York City and Tokyo
Frailty, resilience, and the complex emotions triggered by witnessing trauma in public spaces.
Eye Contact
Melbourne, New York City, Phnom Penh, and Sydney
Exploring the balance of trust, power, and vulnerability in human eye interactions.
Psychic City
The eye as a conduit between perception and the city.