I'm interested in complexities of humans, real humans. Ironically, in this series I create images impossible to witness. I am conducting a social experiment to generate unfiltered expressions.
In the world of martial arts, when a fighter can't handle a submission move, he "taps-out" to stop the combat and accept the defeat. To produce this series, I gave a remote trigger to my models. I told them to take the photograph when they submitted. Then I choked them until I saw the flash. In post production, I erased any trace of myself to isolate the expression without visual distraction.
By shooting the ground glass of my medium format camera, I'm positioning the viewer in the role of the photographer.