My work over the past few years has focused on issues related to landscape design and architecture. I have been investigating the ways in which we invest in and occupy space, trying to gain a deeper understanding of landscape states in order to comprehend our societies' relationships to their environments. Landscape representations are attitudes of awareness; our interpretations of them and their spatial compositions bring us new visions of the world and ourselves.

The spaces in which we live show clear evidence of the rapid pace and multiplicity of changes that have occurred over the past century. Our natural, rural and urban environments have undergone dramatic upheavals, particularly in the past 30 or 40 years. The current landscape is a coming together of radically different and often contradictory spaces. For us, this ever-more fragmented territory has become familiar, and we often traverse it without awareness. Indeed, the fragmentation of the landscape closely parallels the compartmentalization of our activities and time.

The highly mediatized world in which we live surrounds us with abstract spaces and manufactured environments. Our perceptions are inhabited by aspects of a technical culture that transforms, condenses and re-directs them toward a world that is increasingly constructed and orchestrated. A new space is gradually being engineered, one that is inextricably confounding reality and fiction.

We have the privilege of constructing our world: the world we inhabit and the world that inhabits us. This is, of course, not a new phenomenon, but we have unprecedented means for achieving these ends. We give form to worlds that were once impossible and even unthinkable. We act on our surroundings and intervene in the course of events as never before. The universe in which we live has become malleable. It seems clear that our visions and lifestyles have a much greater impact on the world we occupy than in the past. It thus becomes particularly important that we assume responsibility for the landscapes we create and the worlds we imagine.

These are the reflections that have informed my work over the past several years. Doctoring my images, I compose vast panoramas that merge different sites into a single space. These landscapes appear to be familiar, but are constructed from many different images. I use the "transparency" of photography and the fact that it appears to be a direct representation of reality to fabricate spaces that are suspended between document and fiction. These possible worlds show us how easy it is for us to now manipulate and play with the world's realities.

I study the places I encounter, trying to understand the issues, battles and destinies that engage them. My photographs are altered to extend the meaning of the territories that I document. In the series Uncertain Landscapes, Drift and Foundations, I address the non-sites of landscape: empty lots, urban fringes, abandoned industrial sites and modified "natural" areas, tracking down the signs, traces and artifacts that reveal their contradictions and breaks.

Since the beginning of 2003, I have been working on a series titled Destinations. The series is based on photos of North American tourist attractions, nature preserves and towns. I have documented Cape Cod, the Everglades and the Mohave Desert, among others. Tourism conditions the way we look at the land. It is an industry that grows by creating a vast network of privileged and idealized points of view. By placing multiple sites in conjunction with one another, I make this mediated zone tangible.

Time seems suspended in the tranquil universe I create. The vast stretches of land are seductive and embody a touch of the sublime; one could almost consider them a magnification of nature. Yet the serenity of these panoramas is feigned; they sow doubt about natural enchantment. The attentive gaze moves within the photograph, noticing the occasional inconsistency. These images are composed of paradoxes and antitheses: that which attracts is always juxtaposed with one or more opposite effects. Situated midway between chaotic urban periphery and postcard, they could be models or plans for disconcerting developments. The viewer becomes intrigued by their strangeness and ambiguity and experiences a reaction that is divided between rejection and fascination. These landscapes-for-show draw attention to our interest in the grandiose and our ambivalent attitude towards the world: our desire to control it as well as our desire to become immersed in it.