deborah
davis
design

If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite.
For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern. -William Blake

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves. -Carl Jung

Every day you have to abandon your past or accept it. -Louise Bourgeois

Deborah Davis first fell in love with photography as a young child when she “borrowed” her parent’s old Brownie Hawkeye to take pictures around her neighborhood. She continued to investigate photography as a medium and was gifted a Kodak Instamatic 104 camera. With her own camera at hand, she expanded to street photography. Davis continued to explore photography while she pursued her career as a professional book designer, production artist, and typographer. Living and working in the cultural environs of New York City, New England, Colorado, Los Angeles, and Barcelona fueled her discovery process and her photographic eye while walking the neighborhoods on foot for hours.

Davis has traveled extensively, always looking at our everyday culture; photographing spontaneously on city streets, hikes in the wilderness, life on the beach, and people going about their business unnoticed. She focuses her attention, suspends her criticism, and simplifies her perception of real life as she sees it at that exact moment. Davis often reworks her images to reshape those moments via color and form to transcend the original content or complete an incomplete picture. Davis’ goal is to generate an archive and bring awareness to what we think we understand about ourselves and how our perceptions shape and cloud our own lens as a result of our assumptions.