Artist Statement:
   For this project I started experimenting with taking photos of this under black lights. My interest was in the UV wavelength’s ability to pick up things that aren’t obvious to the naked eye. I began shooting things that I knew had substances such as blood that supposedly fluoresced under black lights quickly found that the claim was probably exaggerated by shows such as CSI. I kept at it and found that some things on my body, either secreted or put on there myself. fluoresced whereas it didn’t on my clothes. I then composed a series of close ups that examine the stuff that’s on our skin. I found out that oil the pores of my nose glowed orange, the lint left on my feet glowed blue; I discovered a hand cream that glowed red and a deodorant that glowed green; I put a piece of toilet paper on my tongue that brought out the texture of it. At times it’s obvious that these pictures are of part of a body, but in a few, such as the red hand cream one, the form is abstracted and almost looks more like an alien landscape than a simple cream-smeared pal.
   Aesthetically, the UV makes the colors vibrant and striking in contrast to the the flat black of the background. Conceptually it also gives these simple toiletries and things that are on our skin sci-fi radioactive connotations. Seeing things under these lights leads me to question their safety, my own cleanliness, and whether cleanliness is more of a habit or aesthetic rather than actually being clean.