Exit Eden

This body of work was exhibited in Chicago, Aspen, and the Netherlands in 2012. Here is the statement for the series:

Exit Eden addresses concerns about loss caused by climate change or ecocide. My work considers our planet as an "Edenic" paradise while questioning our intellectual and spiritual accountability at the current state of development. Transformative effects of climate change are made visible through the abstraction of dense landscape photography. I photograph natural areas, often using overlapping multiple exposures, and then remove layers of the film's emulsion with chemicals. Partially destroying the image mimics the state of our bedraggled resources, thus the pieces in Exit Eden become tableaux to the disappearing qualities of nature as we once knew it. Representing the issue in this manner confronts the loss of my original images, the analog color transparency, as well. Final prints are archival pigment prints in editions of 6 each, the widths vary but heights are generally between 20”-28” inches high.

Masters, Edits, and Cuts

My concern in the series Masters, Edits, and Cuts is threefold: to honor the magical contribution of the analog recording mediums Magnetic Tape (which served as the original for audio/video/informational recording) and Photosensitive Transparency Film (or slide film); the second is to reflect the process of recording itself between light sensitive material briefly physically touching the magnetic medium; the third is an attempt at visual expressions something akin to the emotional content I derive from sounds and images generally contained by such arcane media.

As the magnetic tape touches the 8 x 10 inch transparency film I appreciate machine honed precision materials as shiny miracles of science. Colored light bouncing off the magnetic tape casts rippled waves and patterns onto the film (as if to confirm the scientific phenomena) in the form and content of the sound and light based media. The tape curls are reminiscent of the roll it comes from and the analog editing process it goes through. These materials physically interact, aided by my hand and colored light in multiple exposures over an additive color mixing process, and then it's time to process the film. What remains is a temporary form revealed, a kind of self-portrait of materials used to communicate so much in the century of our massive industrial and technological growth.

Castings

The Castings series utilizes the processes of entropy and reconciliation in tandem with the photographic instant and its medium. I perform traditional photography in the natural environment- shooting scenes on film over each three-month season. The film is then processed and approximately five prints are scanned to be printed on light sensitive paper as Lambda style C-prints. I return the prints back to the same location where they were photographed and place them either faceup or facedown leaving them out for the following season. Decay and entropy work directly on the prints in the form of radiation, temperature and moisture fluxuations, insects, chemical interactions, and so on until they are collected.

The process often results in a near total abstraction of the two-dimensional images. Direct contact with the ground acts as a stencil or cast whereby nature imprints some of its form directly onto the emulsion. The print surface degrades and begins to decompose as it becomes collaged with parts of the nature it depicts, forcing a type of reconciliation between subject and object. The idea is one of non-human forces in collaboration with myself and the camera to create abstract photographic representations.

I began Castings in the summer of 2009 and documented seasonal changes at the location in Northwest Indiana for nearly two years. The prints were trimmed and encased in airtight Plexiglas vitrines, some still with dirt, leaves, etc, to be assembled in various configurations.