Using the photograph to investigate the medium itself, Parsley Steinweiss works to uncover aspects of representation that pertain to seeing and believing. In other words, she asks the questions of what the role of the photograph is in the construction of our reality, what does it consist of, how is it filtered and manipulated, how does it relate to memory, and what is its relationship to visual perception. Through different modes of exploration each piece is an examination in how we see. She explores flattened space versus three dimensional space, real versus represented and image versus object.
What we see when we look at the photograph is, at its most basic level, a record of light. Parsley uses this essential aspect of photography as both subject and method of inquiry. She photographs light phenomena to investigate the relationships generated between how we see and how the camera sees, charting the distance between us and our representations.