Publication Date

Spring 5-7-2026

Document Type

Dissertation/Thesis

First Advisor

Jessica Labatte

Second Advisor

Frank Trankina

Third Advisor

Amanda VanValkenburg

Degree Name

M.F.A. (Master of Fine Arts)

Department

School of Art and Design

Disciplines

Photography

Abstract

Concrete Crumbles examines instability within contemporary American political and social life through photography, collage, and installation. Using construction zones and damaged infrastructure as primary subject matter, the project investigates how material transformation and fragmentation can function as metaphors for political precarity, media saturation, and the erosion of civic stability. Photographs are printed on copy paper, physically cut, rearranged, collaged, and scanned into unstable compositions that resist fixed perspective and seamless representation. These processes emphasize labor, impermanence, and reconstruction while challenging photography’s traditional association with objectivity and permanence.

The work is informed by historical and contemporary influences including Brassaï, Germaine Krull, Kurt Schwitters, Jessica Labatte, Daniel Gordon, and Lyle Rexer’s writing on abstraction in photography. Drawing from traditions of Dada collage, photographic abstraction, and material experimentation, the project positions the photographic image as a constructed and continually shifting site of meaning rather than a stable document. Philosophically, the work engages with contemporary conditions shaped by media spectacle, algorithmic attention cycles, and the normalization of political instability. References to works such as The Echo Machine by David Pakman and Fahrenheit 451 inform the project’s examination of distraction, fragmented attention, and perceptual overload.

Personal experience also plays a significant role in shaping the work. Following an epilepsy diagnosis that limited mobility and altered the artist’s relationship to public space, construction sites became recurring visual encounters and conceptual parallels to instability within healthcare systems and everyday life. Through fragmentation, layering, and material disruption, Concrete Crumbles creates images that function simultaneously as records, warnings, and spaces for critical reflection, encouraging viewers to reconsider what appears stable within contemporary society.

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