BOOK PROJECT DESCRIPTION: Natural Light
[one sentence description] I’m publishing a monograph of photography that holds my voice about growing things, and things growing, describing my narrative of the lovely and sometimes perverse, grown environment observed over 20 years.
This monograph of photography holds my voice about growing things, and things growing. Things that grow carry stories and offer information about their caretakers, perseverance and what nature and nurture hold. Plants are utterly loaded with meaning and occupy much of my photography practice. I’m a farm boy at heart and an artist by nature. The photographs I make are often portraits and evidence of what was and can no longer be seen. Photography is magic in this way, deceptively acting as a document, yet personal, seen but beyond reach. The book will feature the series Farm Sites, made collectively over a six-year period. Traveling across the country I searched for these sites to make pictures of the space left by missing farmhouses defined by the remaining trees. These non-indigenous trees, planted by human hands, bear witness to this phenomenon. I’ll include images from the series Tree Labels. My Mother raised trees and sold them to landscapers, building college funds for her children. The trees I photographed for these six images are on the grounds where she spent her last days in assisted living, some bought from her decades prior to her dying there. In the last few years, I have made images with natural light exclusively. Some are studio works, formal portraits of people’s house plants, and still lives constructed to show the beauty of plants and the cycle of life reflecting everything we can know. In between will be Weeds, dealing with form and the innate forces of nature. All these works use different formal approaches, but at the core hold the same aspirations which will be reflected in the book using scale, color and black and white. I’m thinking about writers. I aim to publish fifty or sixty images in this book, in a limited run, with several copies hand-numbered and signed with a frame-able print. Rita Bullwinkel and Claire Daigle have agreed to write. Other writers I am in conversation with or considering are bell hooks, and Dore Bowen.
TREE LABELS. Three images from a series of six. Crab Apple #34, Illegible #6, Green Ash #15. Archival pigment prints, 11 x 9 1/2 inches, each, 2017
This series of 6 images made over a three year period to get them right. The tress are on the campus of where my Mother spent her last days before she died. She raised trees sold them to landscapers and built our college funds. This place bought trees from her decades prior to her living there.
FARM SITES. The following four images are from a series of fourteen. Gelatin-silver print, framed 22 1/2 x 35 3/4 inches, 1999-2005
This work was done collectively over six years. The importance of beauty is placed secondary. This gives priority to the observed phenomenon, allowing meaning to unfold: the phenomenon of the space left by the missing farmhouse, defined by the remaining trees. The trees bear witness.
.
FOLIAGE. Three images from a grid of twenty. African Sumac, Magnolia, Persimmon. Archival pigment prints, 19 x 15 inches each, 2018
Always displayed in a grid, the piece beckons the viewer forward into a void — making palpable an innate sense of attraction and repulsion.
.
WEEDS. Three images from a series of six. Alameda Street, Chestnut Street, Illinois Street.. Gelatin-silver prints, 11 1/4 x 9 inches each, 2006-2008
This series consists of five images. Perseverance and nature are fully represented. The projected ended once I realized I made an inverse image, Alameda Street, of the first one in the series, Chestnut Street.
Triptych. CUTS, Archival pigment prints, framed 31 x 25 inches each, 2018
NURTURE. The following six images are from a series of forty-three. Archival pigment prints, four sizes, 24 3/4 x 18 , 18 x 24 3/4, 36 1/2 x 25 3/4 , 25 3/4 x 36 1.2 inches, 2013-2014
.
PLANTS IN THE WORLD. Four images from an in-progress series. Archival pigment prints, 10 x 8 and 8 x 10 inches inches each, 2014-on going.
.
HORIZONS. Three images from a series of four. Gelatin-silver prints, 8 1/4 x 6 1/2 inches, 2004-2005
.
SCONCES. Two images from a series of three. Archival pigment prints, 22 x 23 3/8 inches, 2018
This series comes from a family craft activity, something homemade or assembled. My grandmother made one of these with her daughter, my mother. My memory has it they worked on painting it together as a collaboration. It hung in the bathroom as I grew up, and I photographed in it's last home, where it sold in an estate sale when my last parent died. Photographing them in natural light is key to the presence and detail the images have. They are not assertive in scale, but have a one to one relationship - tromp loile in spirit, maybe not as primary in the experience of looking.
.
POSIES. The following three images are from a series of ten. Archival pigment prints, 26 x 21 inches each, 2018
Faux greenery and flowers were arranged and photographed as formal portraits, revealing potential anthropomorphic readings, kitsch and a sense of pathos.
.
GROW: Houseplant Portraits The following four images are from a series of fifteen, 26 3/8 x 21 5/8 inches each, 2016-2018
Houseplant portraits is a series that began in 2016. I borrowed house plants from participants who would either loan me the plant to bring to my studio, or I would photograph the plant on site. All the images done in natural light and created an opportunity to discover people through the objects they care for revealing their character through the plant.
.
PARASITE. A series of one. Parasite, Archival pigment print, 51 1/2” x 37 1/2 inches, 20177. This image inspired the exhibition, Natural Light.
ARCHIVES family pictures, mostly taken by my mother.
