Shane Deruise (The Artist as Words)

I used to take photographs about my environment, objects, myself, and friends. Those images never felt close to me, though, there is a strange thing about being shunned, and misunderstood… never feeling at home. After searching for many years, and losing a lot of what I lived for, I realized what I want my work to encompass. Now I take pictures of gender, the human condition, and trauma.

The human condition is growth and decay. I am searching out beauty within the grotesque. We are not all the same, people’s physicality has inspired me to confront the everyday sense of normalcy and decency. If intimacy wasn’t such a confining word… for me it may be represented as substance; emotional, sexual, and hideous.