I have always been fascinated by Janus, the Roman god of beginnings, transitions, time, and duality. With one face looking into the past and the other into the future, Janus embodies change, movement between states, from youth to adulthood, from one vision to another.

In this work, the discovery of folding photographic paper allowed me to create a Janus figure from my wife, Hali, making this piece an allegory for After Image as a whole. The tension between the direct positive photographs, deeply analog and singular and the way the straws render an image as a kind of digital bitmap reflects this duality. Like Janus, the work looks simultaneously backward and forward, engaging with both the passage of time and its implications. After Image similarly explores time’s movement, not only reflecting on my mother’s past before my birth but also confronting the inevitable future, a quiet memento mori.