The edge of the photograph is among the sharpest of artistic tools. With it, photographers are able to carve the visible world into slices of their own invention. What lies just in or out of the frame can alter the intrinsic reality of a photograph. This dynamic in photography is fascinating to me, particularly in how it serves as a convention in documentary photography. It has led me to the world of reenactors. I wanted to know what would happen when the reality-shaping aspect inherent to photography was faced with a situation that was both real and unreal at the same time.

The reenactor's world, at first, seemed ripe for the wielding of a sharped-edged sense of irony, what with their funny clothes, romantic notions, and robust earnestness. How easy it would be to photograph a reenactor, dressed and fully-committed, with the inclusion at frame-edge of some element that deflated the subject's own notion of the photograph he or she might be in. For me, it turns out, it was too easy. The ability to shape the reality of an image, contrary to the expectations of the subject, often with the slightest ease, seemed unworthy. It was asymmetrical warfare. The men and women in this story, re-creators of the arts, skills and ideals of medieval Europe, in the genuine sincerity of their endeavors, challenged me - laid a gauntlet at my feet, as it were, to find other ways to explore the line between the real and unreal.

In the story that emerged, I sought to present the subjects on their own terms. I realized that the men and women in these pictures, who choose to spend their weekends recreating life from an ancient time, do so with their own sense of irony, and with their own sense of reality. What was satisfying was to surrender both my own notions of what counted as real, and the obvious photographic conventions that are used to signify those notions. The resulting images speak for the people in them, and who is to say that there are no knights in shining armor anymore?