“It is not
that what is past casts its light on what is present, or what is present its
light on what is past; rather… what has been comes together in a flash with the
now to form a constellation” ~Walter Benjamin
These new photographs locate the
small areas of concentrated emotion in old paintings and sculpture, where
history, memory, and the artist’s imagination coalesce. Made in 2014-2016,
these images of images isolate rapturous details where the meanings of life
accumulate. In one photograph, a black string tied into an off-kilter bow connects
the edges of a white collar that barely covers the pale human neck below; in
another, a half-closed hand falls on plush fabric, the result of a swoon, an
illness, a death? Through the careful framing of a particular, instead of the
whole, this work simultaneously invokes fragility, violence, romance, and mortality.
I use the camera to create a time
warp. The viewer’s eye volleys between mediums, between the temporal nature of
photography and the metaphysical power of painting and sculpture. In these
photographs of ancient art, the past continues into the present. These pictures,
mostly of European art, were made in the United States over a two-year period,
as I photographed in museums, antique shops, and historic houses. During the
previous forty years, I made black and white gelatin silver prints, focusing on
the pictorial and painterly aspects of photography. Working now in color and
digitally, each capture is in dialogue with my analogue negatives. This project
uses new technology to investigate old aesthetic and human values that do not
disappear with technical change. The clarity of these photographs is a point of
entry into the painting or sculpture. Paint cracks and the granularity of stone
are intensified, underscoring their vulnerability. Brushstrokes are
exaggerated, emphasizing the human hand that made them.
These pictures transport the viewer
to a “constellation” of old and new techniques and imagery. My photographs
reject the false perfection of the whole, and instead lay claim to the ambiguity
of a single gesture. These pictorial fragments dislodge us even while their
familiarity—a hand, a dress, a neck—unite us with our ancient selves.
You bring me into an intimacy with everyone and everything that has ever been and will be through the lense you have created by being dislodged over and over and united again and again. Thanks for sharing your deep interest in being and watching.
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