My fascination with UFOs started with this book (Mysteries of the Unexplained) in the 1980’s. It was packed with so many fantastical UFO stories that it got me hooked on the lore of UFOs. From the mid-1990s until the early 2000s, my interest in UFOs peaked with shows like The X-files, but it also diminished somewhat when I came across a book called Dreamland by Phil Patton. His book pointed out many incongruencies with ufology and aliens in general. For example, when aliens first started to make contact with people, they looked very human-looking (Nordics), but as time went on, they changed into big-eyed grey aliens. Are UFOs/aliens the cultural folklore of our time, as Carl Jung had postulated? or were they a figment of our imagination made up from misidentified phenomena? Dreamland changed my perspective on UFOs. I was at a crossroads because I had never seen evidence of UFOs, and Dreamland presented a grounded view of the phenomenon.

Although I felt less enthusiastic about UFOs being a tangible part of reality, I spent the next decade visiting the most infamous hot spots of UFO folklore: Roswell, Area 51, and Snowflake Arizona (the scene of the Travis Walton abduction). I didn’t expect much when visiting these places, but I was on a quest. Roswell felt like a low-budget Disneyland for UFO believers, Area 51 seemed derelict versus a hive of secret activity, and Snowflake (although creepy) seemed like an average small town in Arizona. I felt there was no possible way it could be true, yet something must have been gnawing away at me because it remained on my radar. Maybe I was driven by the X-file’s core sentiment: I want to believe.

Then everything changed in 2017. That’s when the US government released the Navy pilot videos of UAPs (formerly UFOs). I had an immediate renewed interest because of all the hype. The US government was finally saying these things were real for the first time. I also discovered a UFO on B-roll from a documentary in 2016. They must be real, after all!

The question of what UFOs are is still unknown. UFOs seem like ‘incomplete constructs’ hanging around us like fragments of waking dreams. The shapes of the craft are rudimentary, sometimes comical, because they look like a hub cap that’s been thrown into the air and photographed.  They often resemble non-technological platonic forms like cubes flying through the sky.

Are UFOs just a matter of perception? Very often, the recorded images are blurry/distorted, but for some reason, there is just enough information that we’re able to draw conclusions - everything from craft piloted by otherworldly beings to advanced human technological leaps. But I also question if it’s just a trick of the mind or a hoax…In other words, are UFOs just a sleight of hand trick perpetrated by some government organization? And if that is the case, what purpose would that serve?

I understand that people want to believe in something other than themselves. As human beings, we are fine-tuned to believe. Billions of people believe in a God that created the universe.. and so why can’t people believe that aliens and UFOs exist? It’s less of a leap to think aliens are visiting us versus God, angels, and demons. Maybe these aliens are those things, just modified/tangible components of the old belief systems.

At the heart of it, I am obsessed with the truth and realize that I might never know what that is. I am interested in the unknown, the unseen, and what’s beyond the door of reality. For this reason, I decided to explore UFOs in a photographic/miniature series. This new work focuses on the mythology of UFOs/aliens in popular culture over the last 75 years and how it has evolved, adapted, and changed.   Ultimately, I am willing to accept the truth of whatever it might be: balloons, weather phenomena, interdimensional beings, robots probing our simulated reality…

Regardless, the truth is out there.