4 black-white Works | 1990-1995 |
As a child, I used to hide behind my Dad's legs when meeting strangers or encountering a new place.
The barrier of his legs allowed me to interact while still holding on. A notion then that "possibility" was offered by what is usually deemed limitation became prominent in my work.
These images are drawn from a period of more "conventional" photographic practice that included much metaphoric application / extension of the image onto persons, i.e., precarious interchanges of physical as perceptual limitation.
But I was most interested in exploring how limitation seemed to function as both barrier and vehicle.
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Duck Blind 1995-1997 [images 1-5]
A shotgun blast illuminates a canvasback kill at dawn.
Photographs of white men duck hunting; Northern Minnesota, USA.
A work based in two + tangled notions: killing is an essential, even obligatory way of interacting with nature, and to this end, camouflage becomes necessary for humans to fit into nature.
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Oak Circle 1983-1999 [images 6-15]
My father taught me to work; taking his picture while he lay dying.
Photographs of a/my white, middle-class family; Minneapolis area and "up North" Minnesota, USA.
An engagement with notions of family, memory, childhood and a once labor, now middle-class household, primarily sought through images of the family's children.
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Vision Loss 1995-1997 [images 16-21]
Seeing a blindfolded man with a blind man's cane.
Photographs of a mobility training program for the blind; Minneapolis, Minnesota, and leader-dog training in Detroit, Michigan, USA.
A work specifically engaging a fascination with altered or interrupted perception. Why do we / seek to additionally limit our already limited perception? Further, if eye contact is the revealing gesture between individuals in a culture, what happens when this possibility is thwarted?
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an Others' place 1985-1991 [images 17-20]
Hearing without listening; the terrible thing said that sounded so beautiful.
Photographs in big cities and/or foreign places; Switzerland and Germany shown here; other cities / countries include: New York, Dallas, and Washington, DC, USA, and Sweden, Denmark, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Peru.
A work based in the potentials of foreignness -- walking amongst those I do not / cannot truly know. Freed (often) from language and explicit knowledge, I work knowing that I am not bound to any "truth" of that place.
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In these projects, I saw the gun, the cane, and explicit knowledge, like my father's legs, as both barriers to and vehicles of interaction and perception.
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These works have been published in Minnesota Monthly, Art Paper, Shots, and the Nimrod Literary Journal -- as recently as 2011. Images of children within Oak Circle have been reviewed by George Slade and published in pARTs Journal.
These works have been shown in national juried exhibitions at the Atlanta Photography Gallery, the Sea Cliff Gallery, and the Florida Center for Contemporary Art.
Most saliently, larger excerpts from these works were commingled and exhibited in solo, 2-person, and/or sculpture park efforts, including: middle works, 1992; branch, 1994; …this winter…, 1996; Drop, 1997; and home 98 and Dock, both 1998.
A vast bulk of these photographs remain in hibernation, awaiting proper opportunity.