Artist Statement
Sunshine State is a photographic series documenting the visual and cultural complexity of the contemporary Florida tourist landscape.
My family moved to Florida when I was eleven. What I discovered is that the lived experience of growing up in paradise doesn't always look like it does on the postcards. I didn't wrestle alligators or cavort with mermaids. Though the origins of that ideal are never far away, on a given day it's more likely that you'll see a mural of a shark on the side of a building than actually run into one in real life.
In this body of work, I am interested in examining the places where the banal everyday and the tourist fantasy (and it's representation) coexist. My intent is to deconstruct the idyllic Florida traditionally depicted and reconstruct a more accurate representation of the tourist landscape.
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