These images in Double Life were created from scanning and manipulating two or more negatives in Adobe Photoshop.  Using the computer as a tool to create a “believable” situation is not that different from accepting any photograph as an object of truth, or by creating a story about two people seen laughing, making-out, or quarreling in a restaurant. The events portrayed in these photographs look believable, yet have never occurred.  By digitally creating a photograph that is a composite of multiple negatives of the same model in one setting, the self is exposed as not a solidified being in reality, but as a representation of social and interior investigations that happen within the mind.

For each of my images, I use one model, Kiba Jacobson, and a stand-in who she performs with in each scene.  Kiba and the stand-in take turns playing two characters. The stand-in is digitally composited OUT of the scene in post-production, leaving my model to play both parts in the digital construction.  For the Hyde Park Art Center commission, I would make a photograph in a place the donor suggests (their home, somewhere else in Chicago, or anywhere they have in mind). The donor (or anyone else they have in mind) would be able to be the “stand-in” in the making of one of my photographs. They would work directly with Kiba, playing the roles of the two characters I am photographing in the scene.  The resulting image will portray my model seen twice in the scene, just as in the other images in Double Life.  The donor would receive this image, printed 30×40 inches or 36×48 inches as well as the unique contact sheet images that portray the donor and my model working together for the shoot.