I wake up in the morning and have about 16 hours before I can close my eyes again to wake up the next morning. Ten of those hours are consumed with a nine to five job, travelling and eating. For six hours, I'm free. These six hours are often spent trying to find a justification and purpose for the twenty-four hours a day that I'm allowed to exist. Some people go to another job, some continue with their day job, some raise children, some go to bars, and others go to church. I've avoided all of these choices and more. Instead, I choose the camera.

In Reflection, like most of life, is a contemplation and compensation. It's a show of images lured into the camera, and trapped within the confines of time. They are flashes.

The image is isolated, and kept at a distance, via the camera. The camera becomes a mechanism for viewing the world. It can be the means for showing some hidden beauty, or forcing a feeling to emit from the viewer. The feeling however, is as inanimate as the picture. It is something that has been created, it is contrived. It might be the feeling that was desired, but every feeling is wont to fade with time. The photographic image becomes temporal.

It is because of some strong distrust of the world and it's intangible qualities that I photograph. I prefer to remain as distant as possible. To know the subject is to feel with and for them, but each is fluid. A house, a tree, or some other inanimate object demands nothing in return. They do not pry through too many layers of skin. Instead of digging for emotion, they chase after sensation.

In Reflection is a series of images of places where people try to escape. they are places where the mind relaxes like a deflating balloon. At the sametime, they reveal the two worlds we live in: one fleeting, and one inescapable. This is the same way I feel behind the camea. I am relaxed, I am distant, I am In Reflection; the show is the inescapable part.

Robert Allison

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