When I was a little boy, I liked to hide in quiet, isolated areas. It could be under a desk, in a corner of the balcony, or just in a closet. Whenever I occupied these small, private spaces it gave me a feeling of profound security.

The images in Places to Hide are in part my way of remembering this feeling.

I think the feeling I experienced has something in common with the homing instinct that pulls animals such as birds or fish back to their home territories. Unlike animals, though, human beings have no such places other than the womb itself. In my view, humans long for something like the womb—a place that provides a comfortable, quiet, and safe environment.

In Places to Hide, my intent is to make visible this wish by placing nude figures in small, enclosed spaces throughout the urban landscape. The figures are curled up, suggesting the way a fetus occupies its mother’s womb.

The Japanese are well-known for making efficient use of small living areas, a necessity of their high population density. I myself often find the womb-like qualities of these spaces comforting, not confining. This feeling is what led me to the subject of these portraits, which show the residents of what is best described as a guesthouse for backpackers in Tokyo. The facility is a sort of downscale version of the well-known “capsule hotels” often used by Japanese businessmen for short-term stays.

One of several such facilities in the city, this diminutive, bare-bones hotel takes up one floor of an office building. It is composed of a few hallways, along which the proprietor has built tiny living compartments, perhaps no larger than XX x XX feet, none with enough headroom to stand up straight inside. Separated only by unfinished plywood, the spaces have no windows or door, only a curtain at the entrance for privacy.

Some of the people in these images, whom I’ve shown surrounded by their possessions, stay at the facility for a relatively short time. They may be visiting Tokyo, waiting for a job to come through, or saving money for a better place to live. For other residents, these tiny cubicles are essentially permanent homes.

For me, the real interest of the resulting portraits is in how each resident has made use of a such a small, confining space. Some of the interiors are spartan, perhaps occupied by people who are staying only for a short time. Others are full of possessions, often complete with hanging wardrobes and improvised bookshelves—even “decorated.” Of these, some are neat and orderly and others are chaotic, with personal items strewn everywhere. In each case, the sharply-defined space and its contents tell something about its occupant’s personality, and his or her ability to function in such a strange, enclosed environment.

The Oxford dictionary defines the word stereotype as, “a widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing.” One would think that as the world’s myriad cultures mingle and intermix that the stereotypes people hold about one another would fall to the wayside. But, based on my extensive research, the reality is that stereotypes are still prevalent. Sadly, these stereotypes are used to reinforce suspicions and hostile attitudes that people have about one another. Coming from a country that is culturally and racially homogenous, I use photography to explore the very idea of stereotypes. In this project, I examined the stereotype, basing my photographic representations on an actual visual “average” determined via Google image analytics. I started by searching the Internet for images of specific types of people - plumbers, secretaries, and priests, as well as “more general” categories of people such as nerds, hipsters, and grandmothers. I saved approximately 100 of each type, then reviewed these images one by one to determine their visual similarities, usually in clothing and accessories, hairstyles and facial hair, and gender. Then I broke these observations down into percentages. For example, of the Jewish Orthodox rabbis, 90% were wearing a hat, 92% had a beard, and 94% were male. Based on these findings, I edited the 100 images down to 20. After carefully resizing and aligning the 20 images to create a consistent head-and-shoulders portrait crop, I digitally blended them together. In 'Stereotypes', the final images are blurry-challenging the viewer to find a real individual in each image. There is no one person to find in these “stereotypes” and that is ultimately my point. Everyone, whatever his or her origin, is unique. A stereotype is, in the final analysis, a meaningless and harmful construction.