The Doctor Is Out (of Action), 2024-
'The Doctor' is in — or out, depending on which Polaroid, pixel, or another version you see him in.
He's stuck in a multiverse of Polaroids, digital photographs, and toy replicas, a shrunken, plastic version of himself who can't quite find his way back to full scale. When he does appear at full scale, he is out of place. In his quest to break free from the mere copy of himself, he asks: what and who is the original? The Polaroid? The digital image? What is real?
The series was inspired by Toshio Matsumoto's 1987 short film Engram ("memory trace"), which created photos-within-photos and first raised the question of the original that 'The Doctor' is still chasing: a man who went insane studying Polaroids in school, traveling, or getting stuck through a photographic multiverse, temporarily out of action.
My use of toys directly references Laura Aguilar's Toys series, in which cheap, honest stand-ins never pretend to be anything but copies. There's something inherently funny about staking an identity crisis on a three-inch action figure, and that laughter sits alongside the philosophical weight. Ultimately, the series traces photography’s ongoing narrative between analog and digital and raises the question: what's real in a Polaroid, a digital photo, or a toy? Will 'The Doctor' ever return to reality, or is he stuck traveling between mediums for good?
