Empty Cabinet is a collection of views seen on the ground glass of a view camera. The title is adapted from a passage written by seventeenth-century empiricist John Locke on the topic of human understanding. The camera obscura, if transformed into an analogy of Locke's concept of the mind, is a carrier of information external to itself.

The apparatus is a model for empirical observation while simultaneously harnessing the romance of natural occurring phenomena through technology. This theoretical paradox is embodied in photography's conception during the nineteenth century.

The photographs in Any Color You Like are an experiment in how photography can confuse our perception of information. These photographs are of objects whose primary function is to stimulate our perception of color. A black-and-white image might depict an object of the present, but its character is forever is locked into the past. When these items are rendered in a traditional black-and-white format, the information that remains is merely an abstraction of its previous form.

The chalkboard was once considered to be distortion free, and a photograph was once considered a transparent window onto the world. By photographing chalkboards with film, the syntax of both technologies becomes apparent. The temporary schematics drawn on these boards to emphasize abstract ideas are now embedded in the slate. A useful chalkboard has no history; a used chalkboard is history. What was once empty is now full of information.

As one of the first photographic methods, the photogram was empirically valued for its ability to trace an object by direct contact. To view a photogram is to witness the recent absence of an object. The desire for contact outweighed the shortcoming of its description. Television programs are broadcast and lost. Pressing the photographic paper against the tube, heat and light emanating from the tube are self-inscribed, fulfilling the desire to span distances, making illusions more present.

These images were made with a view camera while riding local commuter rail lines. As the train travels outbound from the station, the view through the window creates an unbroken panorama of industrial and rural views. Attempting to loosely associate these ideas together, the desired metaphor for modernity fails. The final effect is a picturesque view defined by both the constraints of the camera system and the fixed view of the tinted, scratched window. What was once considered an emblem of progress is now only a simulation of nonspecific pastness.