Same Sum

Same Sum, 2016-ongoing, archival pigment prints, approximately 3” x 2” each. As of January 2022, the number of pictures in the series is around 450. The prints are bundled together with broken rubber bands that I have repaired with one knot. The prints are exhibited on a table in a grid, dealt to the table like a deck of cards. A chunk of styrofoam accompanies the remainder prints and serves as a supreme timekeeper and future fossil from the Anthropocene. There is no completion date for the collection. Conveyor Editions published a book of 120 pictures from Same Sum in October 2022 and released it at the New York Art Book Fair. Purchase a signed copy here and a regular copy through the Conveyor Editions link.

Same Sum is a conscious exercise of intuition by listening to my gut more than my head and placing trust in an intentional process of making pictures. If there is one overarching theme that holds the work in place it is chance. The pictures are made up of subjects and situations I find or construct for the camera that occur instep with my subjective, day-to-day life as a cisgender, white man who is simultaneously an artist, a teacher, a husband, a parent, a relative, a friend, a neighbor, a stranger, and more. The title of the project is a mixture of references to the process of making pictures with a DSLR camera (a process that can feel intangible) and photography’s ability to homogenize an array of experiences into and onto flat surfaces. In many ways, Same Sum is about photography flattening the arcs of a life (mine, in this case) and my desire to re-materialize instances, as photographic prints, that made me feel something. The something I most often feel is a presence of mind.