Analogous is a series of photographic experiments and site-specific installations that investigate the current state of photography. The works in this project make use of materials that have become increasingly obsolete in photographic practice, such as grey cards, instant film and obscure darkroom tools. By repurposing these objects, the project addresses photography’s past with reverence, while at the same time acknowledging its digital future. 

This video depicts the gradual development of a Polaroid photograph. The image slowly appears as the chemicals in the Polaroid form an image and then gradually disappear again. The work deals with issues of memory and desire but it is also meant to challenge the immediacy of photography today. By recording the development process of a Polaroid image, a product that was originally intended to make photography more “instantaneous”, the still image has become a time-based art form. In this way, Guoda forces viewers to reconsider the nature of photography in the digital era.

Presented in this series are images of the now abandoned checkpoints that separate former eastern bloc countries from the West, particularly the Czech Republic from Austria and Germany. As remnants of the Iron Curtain, each checkpoint carries with it its own amount of history and aura. Today, each structure stands vacant and serves only as a hollow reminder that one is moving from one country to another. My aim with these images is not to capture memories of the drama that undoubtedly occurred at these checkpoints prior to 1989. Rather, I am interested in them as symbols of the perpetual change that takes place in Europe and beyond. Displayed along with the abandoned checkpoints are images of empty pedestals, discovered during my journeys throughout the region. Having had their statues removed for political or ideological reasons they are yet another reminder of the shifting status quo. As an outsider, I am hypersensitive to the markers left behind by past regimes. The landscape bears the evidence of these philosophical upheavals and people learn to look past them in their daily lives. This project seeks to document the fading scars left behind by past ideologies and may even function as a reminder of how impermanent our present day beliefs can be.

The images in this series depict the marine life murals of artist Robert Wyland. The murals, mostly from the 1980s and 90s can be found throughout the United States and in almost every major US city. They portray whales breaching the water on skyscrapers or peacefully looking over vast expanses of parked cars. Today, in a world saturated by images they blend into the urban environment like fading monuments to a lost era, and many are being erased from the landscape altogether. To me they represent a time when as a society, we resisted the change to a de-natured life with awkward attempts at transforming our seemingly unnatural environment.

Night Zoo is created from streaming web-cam footage being broadcast from the Smithsonian National Zoo at night. The downloaded clips of different animals' enclosures have then been put together in a grid format to allow viewers to experience the zoo from the perspective of a voyeur, watching the animals even as they sleep. Some of the enclosures included in the grid remain motionless without the presence of any animals, while others show only fuzzy images of a sleeping ferret or the nocturnal kiwi roaming its pen. What this video highlights is the power we possess as humans to constantly watch over creatures that are unaware they are being watched. The act of watching these animals as they sleep puts the viewer in the difficult position of dealing with the enjoyment spying on them creates and may even leave one wondering who is watching us when we sleep?