Burton's earliest works are informed by his experience working in the adult film industry. Embracing a role as both insider and outsider, Burton’s redirected lens captures poignant and quiet observations on film sets that might otherwise go unnoticed. Neutral in his approach, these fleeting and ambiguous moments are stripped of didactics or moralism. Instead, his unique images oscillate between the explicit and implicit, erotic and neutered - often within a single photograph. Acutely aware of the classist and puritanical judgements projected onto the pornographic environment, Burton ultimately provides a more challenging depiction of a world more complex than its packaging allows.
Burton’s unique methodology eludes traditional categorical distinction, existing in a space between fantasy and reality. His photographs reveal both the potential and dangers of censorship, while scrutinizing the contradictory nature of collective moralism. In Burton's imagery, absence and presence are equally impactful. Through his distinct visual language, Burton empathetically explores the biases and motivations that inform human behavior, utilizing image-making to engage elemental notions such as desire, affluence, beauty, ambition, love, abjection and the performative nature of identity.