Essen­tial Places

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Essen­tial Places — Artist’s Statement -

With these images and those from my series Mark­ings, I am explor­ing the dif­fer­ence between the land­scape we expect from our innate mem­ory of nature and the land­scape that is implied by the hand of human­ity. As we shape the land­scape, we shape our­selves; as our land­scape changes, we change. Whether we tran­scend what we see depends on that which is inside of us that we bring to the view­ing expe­ri­ence. That change is actual, but also implies new con­nec­tions between the land­scape and our inner selves.

In motion pic­tures, a dis­solve is a tran­si­tion that eases the viewer through the end of a scene and into the next. In this series of images, fog plays a sim­i­lar role. It gen­tly guides us through the land­scape, from clar­ity through ambi­gu­ity to self-reflection. Work­ing at dawn in fog, I dis­cov­ered in these places a dream­like, per­sonal land­scape that is calm and hushed. Fog trans­formed famil­iar places into sym­bolic land­scapes, reveal­ing and giv­ing sig­nif­i­cance to some objects while obscur­ing oth­ers. The images ask me to find true mean­ings in places and things that were once famil­iar and now appear as for­eign territory.

The sub­tle vari­a­tions in the gray scale work well in fog but dif­fer­ently from the crys­tal clear rep­re­sen­ta­tion often asso­ci­ated with black & white pho­tog­ra­phy. Here the del­i­cate, gray tones seem to gain sub­stance as they con­ceal the land­scape. In fog, per­spec­tive is accel­er­ated and the hori­zon lies unde­fined. Forms appear and then van­ish quickly, cre­at­ing a changed place within the famil­iar landscape.