R CARROLL

My practice has shifted from photography to collage because photography, especially in its digital form, has become too technical, too dependent on keystrokes and screens. I miss the physicality it once demanded. In the darkroom, every step required my hands.Processing the film, guiding the print through chemical baths, spotting the final image. The process was tactile, intimate, and slow in a way that digital photography no longer allows.Collage brings me back to that physical engagement. A single piece can take weeks or even months, and throughout that time I am constantly touching, adjusting, and responding. Paper shade, color, texture, and shape all shift in relation to one another, and I react to those changes as they happen. The work evolves through my hands, not through software. That physical dialogue creates a deeper connection to the image I’m building.The meaning of the finished piece is personally rooted in my own experience of making it. I understand that what a viewer sees or feels may be entirely different, and I welcome that. My role is to create work that resonates with me; the viewer’s interpretation, even if it diverges from mine, completes the piece in its own way.Walking the long path of collage—its slowness, its unpredictability, its tactile demands—is deeply rewarding. It brings me back to the kind of making that feels honest, grounded, and fully alive.