Tom Chambers - Artist's Statement

Technological advances have freed Western culture from focusing on lower-level needs, such as finding food and shelter. With the use of technology humanity becomes more outward-focused and object-based, while losing its spirituality. Natural wisdom and intuition are masked.
Because children are innately in synch with their spirit, finding their way through an object-based world can be disconcerting. Sometimes their natural wisdom leads them in one direction, while technological society leads them in another. As a result, children often abandon their spiritual road map.
In my work, children and animals are used symbolically creating a surreal landscape which depicts human vulnerability. Using layers of symbolic opposites, such as animal/human, spiritual/sensual and natural/man-made, I juxtapose conflicting images to create an improbable, but imaginable view of the world.
Working with photos I have taken throughout the United States and Mexico, I create digital photomontages printed onto archival paper. Digital photography provides an innovative approach for generating images. Ironically, the technological tools which have degraded humanity, also allow me to portray the tension resulting from technological change.

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