Artist Laura Plageman, who works in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she grew up, manipulates her photographs physically rather than digitally. In her ongoing series Response, she alters sea and landscapes and forest scenes to create something she describes as being “both a truth and a fiction”. Starting with the printed photographs, she creates a 3D collage, lights it, and photographs the still life. “I like seeing the evidence of the process and the materials showing through in the final image – tears, folds and places where the ink is rubbing off of the paper,” she says. “I want the viewer to see something without knowing what it is yet – to enjoy this moment of looking at the details and discovering the image for themselves.”

• Plageman’s work will be exhibited as part of Her Feet Planted Firmly on the Ground at Houston Center for Photography from 3 March