Industrial and modern architecture manifested in city life has always influenced my photographic work in New York and Paris. The people living in these cities constantly mold its interior and exterior to reinterpret meaning. I interpret meaning in my own creation of the city, often in places that are marked by their massive buildings and striking architecture. I am drawn to such structures in the Parisian suburbs, that have social and architectural significance in relation to the development of the city. Built in the 1970's and early 1980's outside of Paris due to the population boom post World War II and the influx of immigrants following the Algerian War, the villes nouvelles and grands ensembles are low-income housing structures outside the city that represent a society physically removed, looking from the outside in. Their modern utopian aspirations have aged, and their identities now waver between their utopian past and dystopian present. Disenchanted by the Haussmannian architecture of central Paris, the suburban architecture is stark, a chilling beauty looming over the city and engulfing its inhabitants.
I have interpreted a new meaning in these places by using their architectures to create an architecture of my own, a new dialect within a preexisting language. This new dialect attempts to analyze positive and negative space, both in terms of light and dark, empty or full, constructed or deconstructed. "Shape Shifting" questions the relationship between image, construction, and architecture, and analyzes the experience of being in monumental space. Photographed devoid of human presence, the daunting structures engulf and consume the viewer much like how they consume their inhabitants.