It is, is it?

Language, like light, can be reversed. it is, is it? continues an inquiry begun in Fact Fake — a body of work made during the first impeachment trial of Donald J. Trump — into the fragility of truth in an era of sustained disinformation. Where Fact Fake interrogated the collision between fact and fabrication, this new work pushes deeper into the mechanics of meaning itself.

Working with Polaroid film, the piece operates through physical intervention: words are cut from their original context and transposed, so that what appears in positive space carries one meaning while the negative space — the wound left behind — carries another. The image does not deceive — it splits into two simultaneous truths. Two meanings occupy the same plane, each contingent on how the viewer orients their attention.

The title enacts this same instability. It is, is it? — a statement that folds back into a question, an assertion that immediately doubts itself. This is the condition of contemporary knowledge: we are asked to accept things at face value at the very moment face value has become unreliable.

The work is not cynical. It is an invitation. To cut. To look at what remains. To ask what we believe, and why — and whether the negative space of a discarded word might hold as much truth as the one left standing.

This series consists of 7 images, each produced in a limited edition of 30.

Ocean View, DE – 2024