 I'm always interested in finding a way to kind of push the boundaries of what a photograph is and is a photograph necessarily the truth anymore or how many sides to a story can someone tell. My name is Anna Roddy and I'm an artist. My mom is an artist so I was around a lot of art growing up and since then have really formed my community around the arts. I started photographing people in front of the camera who are aware of the camera but with their eyes closed. Something that sparked that idea is just how we photograph ourselves and selfies are a huge thing. We put all of this imagery out into the world that we can control but I'm curious about how intimate you can get and how you can express vulnerability in the presence of another. I like to create something that people can walk in front of or have light cast on them and they can become part of the piece. One of those pieces is a flag. It's almost invisible but when you cast light through it it projects an image on the wall so I was thinking a lot about transparency and how we process information. In my recent work I've been doing a lot of experimenting taking news images. When I print the photograph I printed on a paper that resists the ink when printed so the ink kind of shifts slowly and moves. I'm interested in having some control but not full control over it which is meant to represent the world that we live in. Really what I'm trying to do is capture the feeling that I had when I'm processing a story. A lot of my work is about connection and the limits of connection and understanding one another. I like to put my work back out on social media almost immediately after making it so that I can see how other people react to it. Kind of just start a conversation and a dialogue around what's happening in the world as a way of connecting. We all want to be understood in this world and in life and I have to make art. I don't feel myself if I'm not making it. If you can make something that's connecting and resonating with other people that feels like success to me.