Once a year, I check the pockets of jackets and between the pages of half-read books for receipts which I gather and loosely arrange in piles around my apartment. These tattered bits of paper trace a years worth of transit tickets and sales promotions on nearly expired film. A few quick photos on my iPhone later, and the proofs of these transactions are tossed into the recycling. Despite my photo retouching business being exclusively online I write-off these irrelevant in-person purchases with conviction. As a freelancer, a cunningly devised tax declaration is the closest I’ll ever come to a job promotion.

The flexibility of digital freelancing is at once liberating and exhausting. Sure, I can travel with a laptop and work while sitting in a piazza in Florence but at home that flexibility creeps in before breakfast and hangs around like stale air throughout the day. Tiny crests of anxiety crash into me with each inbox notification. *URGENT* messages from clients arrive at every hour. I am always either working or conscious of work that needs to be done. Because nothing exists unless it has been photographed, I make myself available on demand in order to actualize the existence of things. In my spare time, I apply the same methodology to the pictures and objects I produce as an artist. I document the results of my work to promote myself and apply for residencies, grants and prizes for young and emerging artists.

Photo retouching is done well when all traces of labor are rendered invisible. Blemishes are spot healed, shadows are drawn-in, and lines liquified until there is nothing left standing in the way of the socially expected illusion. Slowly, I disappear behind the adjustment layers of exhibition views, ad campaigns for children’s clothes and weed edibles. At the end of a long day, I often catch myself trying to clone stamp the smudges and fingerprints on my screen in Photoshop. And in my mind’s eye, I regularly attempt to color correct the faded beer and ice cream pictures hanging behind the counter of  my local night shop.

email: felixgrapp@gmail.com instagram: @felixarapp