“The origin of my work stretches back to the outlying woods that surrounded my home as a child. I turned inside to my imagination for adventure. Three logs was a fortress. A hole was a trench. A puddle became a hidden water sanctuary. I went through many sets of clothes as I acted out imaginary scenes behind my parents’ house. This playful, creative approach to life extended into my adulthood, where a blending of my passion for photography, film, prose, and performance melded together to influence my perspective on image making. Pulling ideas from my short stories and isolating core moments into visuals, my work centers on fictitious situations and events, told through the slight hint of a smirking camera.
“I am a fictional storyteller. I use that mindset in this narrative body of work. These photographs refer to larger stories containing buildups and conclusions, but the viewer only receives these brief glimpses of the event. This isolation invites the viewer to meet my imagination halfway, producing a tale that is free to deviate in a number of directions. I dramatize various aspects of life and present them in a packaged form of entertainment. They are escapism from reality, albeit thinly veiled. This is what separates fiction from reality, but it is this separation that I feel most comfortable in. My work is my imagination. Photography allows me to play inside of it.”
Andy Bloxham’s images have appeared in numerous solo and group exhibitions, publications, and online media worldwide. He received his MFA in photography from Louisiana Tech University. He is a faculty member at the Maine Media Workshops, and an assistant professor of art at West Virginia Wesleyan.
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