When I was in sixth grade, I overheard one of my classmates tell a group of her friends that I had “the worst staring problem in the whole school.”

I am interested in the taboos associated with voyeurism. If you are like me, you have to make a conscious effort not to stare at people as they pass you on the street. If you are like me, you feel uncomfortable and perhaps even threatened when you feel the prolonged gaze of a stranger. If you are like me, you want people to notice you and find you attractive. If you are like me, you feel ashamed for judging others and you feel ashamed for being vain.

As far as I can tell, we all like to look, and we all like to be looked at, but only under certain circumstances, with certain intentions, and to a certain degree. It’s okay to stare at a lover, but not at a stranger. It’s only natural for a man to notice a woman, but it’s wrong for him to look at her breasts. Eye contact between strangers on a bus is often awkward, but it’s impolite not to look people in the eye when you speak to them. It is cruel to judge people based on how they look, but how many of us can help it? I am curious about how much we observe of others, while pretending not to notice anyone around us.

In my recent work, I attempt to break some of these behavioral codes in search of an experience that is both scary and uplifting. From these experiences, I produce images that describe my interpretation of the way we live in public by means of depicting a distortion of “normal” behavior.