Since arriving in Rome, I have been working on two projects. The first is a book project which is the culmination of twelve years photographing in charged currents of history around the world. The Axe Will Survive the Master (forthcoming in 2026 by SPBH Editions / MACK Books) is an oblique travelogue engaged with the forces, ideologies, and frictions that shape political realities. Many of the photographs emerged from my experiences cataloguing evidence of violence during the Ukraine War, embedding myself in the dramatic struggles of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement, tracking paroxysms of dissent in America, glimpsing the impacts of totalitarianism in North Korea, and haunting the periphery of the Egyptian Revolution. My aim in all these contexts was not to chronicle rapidly unfolding events. Rather, I set out to create a new visual encyclopedia of forms, portraits, symbols, and residues that arose from the tensions between competing visions for society.

The second project is a series of images I have been making in Rome. Shadows and the Silent Majority meditates on the dramatic potential of the public sphere and our perception of reality. The images depict fictional encounters made by combining fragments of different photographs into credible, but manufactured moments. The result is a waking dream; a believable conceit that questions the factual assumptions of photography and dramatizes the missed interactions, poetic accidents, and alienation of everyday urban experience. They are propelled by my interest in the subliminal recognition of the confusion we face when confronting reality.