thesis

Stillness (the image) as the signifier of culture
The wanderer as signifier of the primal


Stills: When speaking in film terminology, Photographs are referred to as ‘Stills’, they are a fragment: a truncated, shortened, cut, condensed, reduced, abridged or curtailed element of the whole.

It happened, but the “truth value” or “factuality” is questionable at best.

There is no such thing as bad news…
just new information, Recalculate.

I am interested in using that stage, the stage of photography; to not only tell a story but also to refer back to the medium as a metaphor for life’s theatricality and as a central referent to humanities ephemeral nature and inevitable doom.

Research - Artists In Dialogue: In my research I have continually found references to both theater and film: Particularly, the theater of the absurd and European art cinema.

Through the total disrespect of the space-time continuum
(A woman watches as her granddaughter reads her diary) they embrace the aporia educing effects of the contemporary image pandemonium of culture.

I am interested in using that stage, the stage of photography; to not only tell a story but also to refer back to the medium as a metaphor for life’s theatricality and as a central referent to humanities ephemeral nature and inevitable doom.

The majority of photographic theorists today agree that photography has a “that-has-been” quality of truth.

The clouds were puffy and looked like something sweet to eat, like cotton candy from the carnival that comes once a year to the SaveMart parking lot.

But I can’t see her now I just see the street sign ‘Welcome to Reno, Nevada!’

But I can’t see her now I just see the street sign ‘Welcome to Reno, Nevada!’

In this place I don’t see the sweat of the jackrabbit as he scurries through the hard, beaten landscape… the clearing in front of him a blacktop road… his grave splayed out in front of him… and he, like us, hopping ignorantly toward it.

But I can’t see her now I just see the street sign ‘Welcome to Reno, Nevada!’

Through the total disrespect of the space-time continuum
(A woman watches as her granddaughter reads her diary) they embrace the aporia educing effects of the contemporary image pandemonium of culture.

In this place I don’t see the sweat of the jackrabbit as he scurries through the hard, beaten landscape… the clearing in front of him a blacktop road… his grave splayed out in front of him… and he, like us, hopping ignorantly toward it.

Staged, unfixed, without time or place, they present a diaristic projection of narrative.

Eggs over easy, bacon, hash browns, malt liquor and swisher sweets cigarettes…

A woman passes me on the street.

Postmodern asserts that there is a multitude of “selves” however, it does not account for the primal: That element in us with resists culture, the uncontrollable, unpredictable, unknowable in us.

The Otolith Group derives their name from the structure in the inner ear, which establishes our sense of gravity and orientation.

As a photographer, I frame the world… and by framing it whether consciously or unconsciously I am changing it, constructing it.

The majority of photographic theorists today agree that photography has a “that-has-been” quality of truth.

She may be Tiresias, the blind prophet of history who lived as a woman for seven years or she may be simply a woman: waiting, playing solitaire, as expectant as the rest of us.

Philosophical and Theoretical: If we accept that the “self” is neither a genetic physical reality nor a psychological reality, if we accept instead that it is a cultural construct or a series of cultural constructs as is postulated by post-modernist theory than photography is the perfect surface medium and is used most effectively to demonstrate this by such artist as: Cindy Sherman in her ‘Untitled Film Stills’ .

His brother worked at Friends Liquor store and parked cars at the Silver Legacy.

The majority of photographic theorists today agree that photography has a “that-has-been” quality of truth.

The old man across the parking lot is getting out of his truck.

Perhaps the woman with the cage is Persephone’s mother searching for her lost daughter.

Perhaps we are Radicants ; taking root in the ground and histories we find ourselves in.

Research - Artists In Dialogue: In my research I have continually found references to both theater and film: Particularly, the theater of the absurd and European art cinema.

We are storytellers not fact tellers, we may be truth tellers but that is also subject to interpretation.

Stillness (the image) as the signifier of culture
The wanderer as signifier of the primal


Stills: When speaking in film terminology, Photographs are referred to as ‘Stills’, they are a fragment: a truncated, shortened, cut, condensed, reduced, abridged or curtailed element of the whole.

Postmodern asserts that there is a multitude of “selves” however, it does not account for the primal: That element in us with resists culture, the uncontrollable, unpredictable, unknowable in us.

The old man across the parking lot is getting out of his truck.

It was like a year ago, I was cocktailing graveyard at the Atlantis and I saw him there, he was in town for the national bowling competition.

In this place I don’t see the sweat of the jackrabbit as he scurries through the hard, beaten landscape… the clearing in front of him a blacktop road… his grave splayed out in front of him… and he, like us, hopping ignorantly toward it.

I build on those images through reading fictional novels, non-fiction historical texts, seeking out pop cultural references, film, television, music etcetera and mining the archive.

I think after that he was at Coney Island.

We etched them in sand and watch as they washed away.

The clouds were puffy and looked like something sweet to eat, like cotton candy from the carnival that comes once a year to the SaveMart parking lot.

The fat lady down the street leans against her Chevy el Camino.

Philosophical and Theoretical: If we accept that the “self” is neither a genetic physical reality nor a psychological reality, if we accept instead that it is a cultural construct or a series of cultural constructs as is postulated by post-modernist theory than photography is the perfect surface medium and is used most effectively to demonstrate this by such artist as: Cindy Sherman in her ‘Untitled Film Stills’ .

‘Altamodernism’ or the New Modernism of Nicolas Bourriaud underscores that multitude but makes allowances for what is the constant primal impulse of taking root while at the same time being mobile, changeable, malleable.

Tacita Dean, British artist and filmmaker, creates 16mm films with loose poetic narratives.

He got caught smoking in some rich guy’s corvette.

___________________________________________

Facades crash down of the real world I built my life around.

She is selling her velvet painting again: Elvis, horses, kittens and George W. Bush.

___________________________________________

The path of history is stretched out in front of me and it smells like breakfast, the kind mom use to cook before dad went away.

I must have met her somewhere.

Eggs over easy, bacon, hash browns, malt liquor and swisher sweets cigarettes…

A woman passes me on the street.

A live theater
In a desert dream
… A memory place, between



In a town that knows no time
Machines are draped in plastic,
curtains are drawn, doors closed or left open,
An indomitable fog has settled in for an endless winter of waiting.

I follow along the road dutifully all the while knowing these frames are stages, plateaus of performance.

A live theater
In a desert dream
… A memory place, between



In a town that knows no time
Machines are draped in plastic,
curtains are drawn, doors closed or left open,
An indomitable fog has settled in for an endless winter of waiting.

His brother worked at Friends Liquor store and parked cars at the Silver Legacy.

Taking seriously this idea of photography as a stage I write my script in images: an existential and absurdist inspired Operatic anti-epic of place, of Reno… Reno, Nevada.

Transience: I juxtapose that stillness (the stillness of the photographic medium) with the primal representation of the walker, the wanderer.

Later, back in the studio I begin editing and sequencing allowing the story to unfold.

Eggs over easy, bacon, hash browns, malt liquor and swisher sweets cigarettes…

A woman passes me on the street.

We etched them in sand and watch as they washed away.

______________________________________________

It wasn’t always bad…
Like that morning Patrick Mahony the 3rd called me a hot babe, he just said it to me ‘your one, hot babe’ and then he walked on… he didn’t even try and kiss me.

The trees don’t have leaves anymore and I can’t smell the sewer since they changed the caps.

She is selling her velvet painting again: Elvis, horses, kittens and George W. Bush.

Sage is the color of starvation, of withering away in an arid place, of tragedy and irreverence, of the sheer an utter willingness to suffer in order to live …Sage is the color of a cloudy day in Nevada
______________________________________________

Stack the chips, shuffle the deck
and deal me the queen of back luck love.

That was a good day.

Historically the theater of the absurd is tied to the philosophy of Existentialism and Absurdism .

It was like a year ago, I was cocktailing graveyard at the Atlantis and I saw him there, he was in town for the national bowling competition.

Stillness (the image) as the signifier of culture
The wanderer as signifier of the primal


Stills: When speaking in film terminology, Photographs are referred to as ‘Stills’, they are a fragment: a truncated, shortened, cut, condensed, reduced, abridged or curtailed element of the whole.

A live theater
In a desert dream
… A memory place, between



In a town that knows no time
Machines are draped in plastic,
curtains are drawn, doors closed or left open,
An indomitable fog has settled in for an endless winter of waiting.

Exploring our nomadic state by signification and multiplication, I boldly state “we are all wanderers now”.

______________________________________________

It wasn’t always bad…
Like that morning Patrick Mahony the 3rd called me a hot babe, he just said it to me ‘your one, hot babe’ and then he walked on… he didn’t even try and kiss me.

The old man across the parking lot is getting out of his truck.

We were writing our dreams in the clouds on a windy day.

Go forward, turn around, she’s here somewhere, she must be here...

Through the total disrespect of the space-time continuum
(A woman watches as her granddaughter reads her diary) they embrace the aporia educing effects of the contemporary image pandemonium of culture.

A live theater
In a desert dream
… A memory place, between



In a town that knows no time
Machines are draped in plastic,
curtains are drawn, doors closed or left open,
An indomitable fog has settled in for an endless winter of waiting.

___________________________________________

The path of history is stretched out in front of me and it smells like breakfast, the kind mom use to cook before dad went away.

A live theater
In a desert dream
… A memory place, between



In a town that knows no time
Machines are draped in plastic,
curtains are drawn, doors closed or left open,
An indomitable fog has settled in for an endless winter of waiting.

___________________________________________

The path of history is stretched out in front of me and it smells like breakfast, the kind mom use to cook before dad went away.

Someone in the downstairs apartment is singing show tunes, and I think, may be I’ll have a walk today.

The winter smells like solitude and I wander nameless in a misty fog… sage stained memories and desert rocks crutch under my feet.

Work Samples and Examples:


In the opening image, the theater is presented back to the audience, we are the audience of the image, looking at the theater’s audience, peopled by actors who are in turn waiting for themselves to enter the stage, they are waiting for their own play to begin…Waiting for their script to be written, their story to be laid out…for god, fate, history, or the seer to do its work.

The series Reno, Nevada is my first attempt at bringing together the literary and filmic traditions with still photography and in it I seek to add to the dialogue of the poetic absurd.

Staged, unfixed, without time or place, they present a diaristic projection of narrative.

It happened, but the “truth value” or “factuality” is questionable at best.

My images constitutes a loose poetic narrative which oscillates between the sacred and the profane, not the performance of life but the waiting, walking, wandering expectations of your own life’s performance.

I build on those images through reading fictional novels, non-fiction historical texts, seeking out pop cultural references, film, television, music etcetera and mining the archive.

No regrets no expectations.

Eggs over easy, bacon, hash browns, malt liquor and swisher sweets cigarettes…

A woman passes me on the street.

She is selling her velvet painting again: Elvis, horses, kittens and George W. Bush.

Sage is the color of starvation, of withering away in an arid place, of tragedy and irreverence, of the sheer an utter willingness to suffer in order to live …Sage is the color of a cloudy day in Nevada
______________________________________________

Stack the chips, shuffle the deck
and deal me the queen of back luck love.

___________________________________________

The path of history is stretched out in front of me and it smells like breakfast, the kind mom use to cook before dad went away.

Sage is the color of starvation, of withering away in an arid place, of tragedy and irreverence, of the sheer an utter willingness to suffer in order to live …Sage is the color of a cloudy day in Nevada
______________________________________________

Stack the chips, shuffle the deck
and deal me the queen of back luck love.

We walk, we wander,
act, wait, stand…
without expectation
we perform for life.

But once, he saw me walking down 4th street and he picked me up.

It happened, but the “truth value” or “factuality” is questionable at best.

‘Altamodernism’ or the New Modernism of Nicolas Bourriaud underscores that multitude but makes allowances for what is the constant primal impulse of taking root while at the same time being mobile, changeable, malleable.

May be she was at the bowling ally the night Joshua crashed his car.

Sometime back, perhaps a day perhaps a century
We stopped expecting the thing itself
And learned to content ourselves with the effort.

Then us… in a car with windows down, drinking White Zin from a box because we were out of whiskey.

May be she was at the bowling ally the night Joshua crashed his car.

Driving as fast as we can and singing there ‘ain’t no devil, just god when he’s drunk’ we chased death, dared it to take us.

The operatics of life: muted, howling screams are caught in a throat with no voice.

Eggs over easy, bacon, hash browns, malt liquor and swisher sweets cigarettes…

A woman passes me on the street.

Sometime back, perhaps a day perhaps a century
We stopped expecting the thing itself
And learned to content ourselves with the effort.

The fat lady down the street leans against her Chevy el Camino.

Philosophical and Theoretical: If we accept that the “self” is neither a genetic physical reality nor a psychological reality, if we accept instead that it is a cultural construct or a series of cultural constructs as is postulated by post-modernist theory than photography is the perfect surface medium and is used most effectively to demonstrate this by such artist as: Cindy Sherman in her ‘Untitled Film Stills’ .

The majority of photographic theorists today agree that photography has a “that-has-been” quality of truth.

______________________________________________

It wasn’t always bad…
Like that morning Patrick Mahony the 3rd called me a hot babe, he just said it to me ‘your one, hot babe’ and then he walked on… he didn’t even try and kiss me.

I build on those images through reading fictional novels, non-fiction historical texts, seeking out pop cultural references, film, television, music etcetera and mining the archive.

Stillness (the image) as the signifier of culture
The wanderer as signifier of the primal


Stills: When speaking in film terminology, Photographs are referred to as ‘Stills’, they are a fragment: a truncated, shortened, cut, condensed, reduced, abridged or curtailed element of the whole.

We move forward, reaching for a direction, we try to find our way…
We look for paths that appear but lead nowhere, except there, here.

The clouds were puffy and looked like something sweet to eat, like cotton candy from the carnival that comes once a year to the SaveMart parking lot.

Go forward, turn around, she’s here somewhere, she must be here...

Sage is the color of starvation, of withering away in an arid place, of tragedy and irreverence, of the sheer an utter willingness to suffer in order to live …Sage is the color of a cloudy day in Nevada
______________________________________________

Stack the chips, shuffle the deck
and deal me the queen of back luck love.

As a photographer, I frame the world… and by framing it whether consciously or unconsciously I am changing it, constructing it.

Work Samples and Examples:


In the opening image, the theater is presented back to the audience, we are the audience of the image, looking at the theater’s audience, peopled by actors who are in turn waiting for themselves to enter the stage, they are waiting for their own play to begin…Waiting for their script to be written, their story to be laid out…for god, fate, history, or the seer to do its work.

Someone in the downstairs apartment is singing show tunes, and I think, may be I’ll have a walk today.

Eggs over easy, bacon, hash browns, malt liquor and swisher sweets cigarettes…

A woman passes me on the street.

As a photographer, I frame the world… and by framing it whether consciously or unconsciously I am changing it, constructing it.

Someone in the downstairs apartment is singing show tunes, and I think, may be I’ll have a walk today.

Philosophical and Theoretical: If we accept that the “self” is neither a genetic physical reality nor a psychological reality, if we accept instead that it is a cultural construct or a series of cultural constructs as is postulated by post-modernist theory than photography is the perfect surface medium and is used most effectively to demonstrate this by such artist as: Cindy Sherman in her ‘Untitled Film Stills’ .

Later, back in the studio I begin editing and sequencing allowing the story to unfold.

___________________________________________

The path of history is stretched out in front of me and it smells like breakfast, the kind mom use to cook before dad went away.

He looks like Dad, I wonder if its dad?

We move forward, reaching for a direction, we try to find our way…
We look for paths that appear but lead nowhere, except there, here.

I build on those images through reading fictional novels, non-fiction historical texts, seeking out pop cultural references, film, television, music etcetera and mining the archive.

I am interested in using that stage, the stage of photography; to not only tell a story but also to refer back to the medium as a metaphor for life’s theatricality and as a central referent to humanities ephemeral nature and inevitable doom.

They let him bus tables during lunch twice a week.

___________________________________________

The path of history is stretched out in front of me and it smells like breakfast, the kind mom use to cook before dad went away.

The winter smells like solitude and I wander nameless in a misty fog… sage stained memories and desert rocks crutch under my feet.

______________________________________________

‘Tell me the color of your past’ he said.

“We are the music makers”, we shouted at the cows as they look at us with their dull stares.

May be she was at the bowling ally the night Joshua crashed his car.

In Teignmouth Electron: a sort of mixed historo-future she is using the true story of the epic failure of a man, Donald Crowhurst, who’s failed round the world sailing expedition ended in a falsified log and suicide at sea.

In this place I don’t see the sweat of the jackrabbit as he scurries through the hard, beaten landscape… the clearing in front of him a blacktop road… his grave splayed out in front of him… and he, like us, hopping ignorantly toward it.

The series Reno, Nevada is my first attempt at bringing together the literary and filmic traditions with still photography and in it I seek to add to the dialogue of the poetic absurd.

No dreams of tomorrow.

But once, he saw me walking down 4th street and he picked me up.

We walk, we wander,
act, wait, stand…
without expectation
we perform for life.

Eggs over easy, bacon, hash browns, malt liquor and swisher sweets cigarettes…

A woman passes me on the street.

The frames become sets, places where characters have entered, will enter or have just abandoned.

In Teignmouth Electron: a sort of mixed historo-future she is using the true story of the epic failure of a man, Donald Crowhurst, who’s failed round the world sailing expedition ended in a falsified log and suicide at sea.

A live theater
In a desert dream
… A memory place, between



In a town that knows no time
Machines are draped in plastic,
curtains are drawn, doors closed or left open,
An indomitable fog has settled in for an endless winter of waiting.

Exploring our nomadic state by signification and multiplication, I boldly state “we are all wanderers now”.

___________________________________________

The path of history is stretched out in front of me and it smells like breakfast, the kind mom use to cook before dad went away.

His brother worked at Friends Liquor store and parked cars at the Silver Legacy.

Archive: Working with the Nevada Historical Society archive I have found several references to performance and walking in frontier Nevada.

His brother worked at Friends Liquor store and parked cars at the Silver Legacy.

In Teignmouth Electron: a sort of mixed historo-future she is using the true story of the epic failure of a man, Donald Crowhurst, who’s failed round the world sailing expedition ended in a falsified log and suicide at sea.

A live theater
In a desert dream
… A memory place, between



In a town that knows no time
Machines are draped in plastic,
curtains are drawn, doors closed or left open,
An indomitable fog has settled in for an endless winter of waiting.

Later, back in the studio I begin editing and sequencing allowing the story to unfold.

We move forward, reaching for a direction, we try to find our way…
We look for paths that appear but lead nowhere, except there, here.

Perhaps the woman with the cage is Persephone’s mother searching for her lost daughter.

Philosophical and Theoretical: If we accept that the “self” is neither a genetic physical reality nor a psychological reality, if we accept instead that it is a cultural construct or a series of cultural constructs as is postulated by post-modernist theory than photography is the perfect surface medium and is used most effectively to demonstrate this by such artist as: Cindy Sherman in her ‘Untitled Film Stills’ .

A live theater
In a desert dream
… A memory place, between



In a town that knows no time
Machines are draped in plastic,
curtains are drawn, doors closed or left open,
An indomitable fog has settled in for an endless winter of waiting.

Then he asked if he could write me after he left.

Taking seriously this idea of photography as a stage I write my script in images: an existential and absurdist inspired Operatic anti-epic of place, of Reno… Reno, Nevada.

The operatics of life: muted, howling screams are caught in a throat with no voice.

Eggs over easy, bacon, hash browns, malt liquor and swisher sweets cigarettes…

A woman passes me on the street.

The old man across the parking lot is getting out of his truck.

We etched them in sand and watch as they washed away.

He told me Patrick would be lucky to have me.

The clouds were puffy and looked like something sweet to eat, like cotton candy from the carnival that comes once a year to the SaveMart parking lot.

“We are the music makers”, we shouted at the cows as they look at us with their dull stares.

Driving as fast as we can and singing there ‘ain’t no devil, just god when he’s drunk’ we chased death, dared it to take us.

He got caught smoking in some rich guy’s corvette.

The fog covers me like a blanket.

Our efforts of progress end where they began.

As a photographer, I frame the world… and by framing it whether consciously or unconsciously I am changing it, constructing it.

A live theater
In a desert dream
… A memory place, between



In a town that knows no time
Machines are draped in plastic,
curtains are drawn, doors closed or left open,
An indomitable fog has settled in for an endless winter of waiting.

We move forward, reaching for a direction, we try to find our way…
We look for paths that appear but lead nowhere, except there, here.

Research - Artists In Dialogue: In my research I have continually found references to both theater and film: Particularly, the theater of the absurd and European art cinema.

I watch the world as it scripts itself, presenting progress because it assures and reassures audience.

I build on those images through reading fictional novels, non-fiction historical texts, seeking out pop cultural references, film, television, music etcetera and mining the archive.

My images constitutes a loose poetic narrative which oscillates between the sacred and the profane, not the performance of life but the waiting, walking, wandering expectations of your own life’s performance.

Eggs over easy, bacon, hash browns, malt liquor and swisher sweets cigarettes…

A woman passes me on the street.

I build on those images through reading fictional novels, non-fiction historical texts, seeking out pop cultural references, film, television, music etcetera and mining the archive.

______________________________________________

It wasn’t always bad…
Like that morning Patrick Mahony the 3rd called me a hot babe, he just said it to me ‘your one, hot babe’ and then he walked on… he didn’t even try and kiss me.

We were writing our dreams in the clouds on a windy day.

She is selling her velvet painting again: Elvis, horses, kittens and George W. Bush.

Someone in the downstairs apartment is singing show tunes, and I think, may be I’ll have a walk today.

I think I know that stranger.

Postmodern asserts that there is a multitude of “selves” however, it does not account for the primal: That element in us with resists culture, the uncontrollable, unpredictable, unknowable in us.

I am not attempting to form a literal narrative but rather a loose gathering of signs, the historical now of a place.

But I can’t see her now I just see the street sign ‘Welcome to Reno, Nevada!’

We move forward, reaching for a direction, we try to find our way…
We look for paths that appear but lead nowhere, except there, here.

Then us… in a car with windows down, drinking White Zin from a box because we were out of whiskey.

The operatics of life: muted, howling screams are caught in a throat with no voice.

The Otolith Group derives their name from the structure in the inner ear, which establishes our sense of gravity and orientation.

“We are the music makers”, we shouted at the cows as they look at us with their dull stares.

They are either in full presentation stance, in mid-step (the awkward posture of stilted movement) or in process performance (entering a scene in which they will present a particular pose).

In this place I don’t see the sweat of the jackrabbit as he scurries through the hard, beaten landscape… the clearing in front of him a blacktop road… his grave splayed out in front of him… and he, like us, hopping ignorantly toward it.

___________________________________________

The path of history is stretched out in front of me and it smells like breakfast, the kind mom use to cook before dad went away.

Historically the theater of the absurd is tied to the philosophy of Existentialism and Absurdism .

We move forward, reaching for a direction, we try to find our way…
We look for paths that appear but lead nowhere, except there, here.

In Teignmouth Electron: a sort of mixed historo-future she is using the true story of the epic failure of a man, Donald Crowhurst, who’s failed round the world sailing expedition ended in a falsified log and suicide at sea.

They represent no part of any essence but rather refer to a state of perpetual performance, of culture.

Days became weeks and weeks became years.

Someone in the downstairs apartment is singing show tunes, and I think, may be I’ll have a walk today.

Driving as fast as we can and singing there ‘ain’t no devil, just god when he’s drunk’ we chased death, dared it to take us.

___________________________________________

The path of history is stretched out in front of me and it smells like breakfast, the kind mom use to cook before dad went away.

A live theater
In a desert dream
… A memory place, between



In a town that knows no time
Machines are draped in plastic,
curtains are drawn, doors closed or left open,
An indomitable fog has settled in for an endless winter of waiting.

Someone in the downstairs apartment is singing show tunes, and I think, may be I’ll have a walk today.

He ordered a bud light and asked my name.

Eggs over easy, bacon, hash browns, malt liquor and swisher sweets cigarettes…

A woman passes me on the street.

Taking seriously this idea of photography as a stage I write my script in images: an existential and absurdist inspired Operatic anti-epic of place, of Reno… Reno, Nevada.

I build on those images through reading fictional novels, non-fiction historical texts, seeking out pop cultural references, film, television, music etcetera and mining the archive.

______________________________________________

‘Tell me the color of your past’ he said.

The second image is that of a woman who may be a player, a reader, or a seer.

___________________________________________

The path of history is stretched out in front of me and it smells like breakfast, the kind mom use to cook before dad went away.

Sage is the color of starvation, of withering away in an arid place, of tragedy and irreverence, of the sheer an utter willingness to suffer in order to live …Sage is the color of a cloudy day in Nevada
______________________________________________

Stack the chips, shuffle the deck
and deal me the queen of back luck love.

Taking seriously this idea of photography as a stage I write my script in images: an existential and absurdist inspired Operatic anti-epic of place, of Reno… Reno, Nevada.

Then us… in a car with windows down, drinking White Zin from a box because we were out of whiskey.

We move forward, reaching for a direction, we try to find our way…
We look for paths that appear but lead nowhere, except there, here.

They also agree that by framing, photography is excluding and by excluding it is only representing partial truth and that partial truth is, in fact, wholly false.

“We are the music makers”, we shouted at the cows as they look at us with their dull stares.

In Teignmouth Electron: a sort of mixed historo-future she is using the true story of the epic failure of a man, Donald Crowhurst, who’s failed round the world sailing expedition ended in a falsified log and suicide at sea.

Stillness (the image) as the signifier of culture
The wanderer as signifier of the primal


Stills: When speaking in film terminology, Photographs are referred to as ‘Stills’, they are a fragment: a truncated, shortened, cut, condensed, reduced, abridged or curtailed element of the whole.

I heard he got fired though.

___________________________________________

Facades crash down of the real world I built my life around.

The operatics of life: muted, howling screams are caught in a throat with no voice.

She is selling her velvet painting again: Elvis, horses, kittens and George W. Bush.

But I can’t see her now I just see the street sign ‘Welcome to Reno, Nevada!’

Stillness (the image) as the signifier of culture
The wanderer as signifier of the primal


Stills: When speaking in film terminology, Photographs are referred to as ‘Stills’, they are a fragment: a truncated, shortened, cut, condensed, reduced, abridged or curtailed element of the whole.

We move forward, reaching for a direction, we try to find our way…
We look for paths that appear but lead nowhere, except there, here.

Therefore, photography is a form of lies, which are also true.

No thoughts of yesterday.

A live theater
In a desert dream
… A memory place, between



In a town that knows no time
Machines are draped in plastic,
curtains are drawn, doors closed or left open,
An indomitable fog has settled in for an endless winter of waiting.

Someone in the downstairs apartment is singing show tunes, and I think, may be I’ll have a walk today.

I build on those images through reading fictional novels, non-fiction historical texts, seeking out pop cultural references, film, television, music etcetera and mining the archive.

Work Samples and Examples:


In the opening image, the theater is presented back to the audience, we are the audience of the image, looking at the theater’s audience, peopled by actors who are in turn waiting for themselves to enter the stage, they are waiting for their own play to begin…Waiting for their script to be written, their story to be laid out…for god, fate, history, or the seer to do its work.

I follow along the road dutifully all the while knowing these frames are stages, plateaus of performance.

A live theater
In a desert dream
… A memory place, between



In a town that knows no time
Machines are draped in plastic,
curtains are drawn, doors closed or left open,
An indomitable fog has settled in for an endless winter of waiting.

Driving as fast as we can and singing there ‘ain’t no devil, just god when he’s drunk’ we chased death, dared it to take us.

We move, we change, and as we move we change the places we inhabit as well as our understanding of those places.

______________________________________________

‘Tell me the color of your past’ he said.

“We are the music makers”, we shouted at the cows as they look at us with their dull stares.

He said that he liked me but he didn’t live around here.

In Teignmouth Electron: a sort of mixed historo-future she is using the true story of the epic failure of a man, Donald Crowhurst, who’s failed round the world sailing expedition ended in a falsified log and suicide at sea.

But I can’t see her now I just see the street sign ‘Welcome to Reno, Nevada!’

___________________________________________

The path of history is stretched out in front of me and it smells like breakfast, the kind mom use to cook before dad went away.

We etched them in sand and watch as they washed away.

Sometime back, perhaps a day perhaps a century
We stopped expecting the thing itself
And learned to content ourselves with the effort.

In Teignmouth Electron: a sort of mixed historo-future she is using the true story of the epic failure of a man, Donald Crowhurst, who’s failed round the world sailing expedition ended in a falsified log and suicide at sea.

A live theater
In a desert dream
… A memory place, between



In a town that knows no time
Machines are draped in plastic,
curtains are drawn, doors closed or left open,
An indomitable fog has settled in for an endless winter of waiting.

They let him bus tables during lunch twice a week.

___________________________________________

The path of history is stretched out in front of me and it smells like breakfast, the kind mom use to cook before dad went away.

We etched them in sand and watch as they washed away.

___________________________________________

The path of history is stretched out in front of me and it smells like breakfast, the kind mom use to cook before dad went away.

Taking seriously this idea of photography as a stage I write my script in images: an existential and absurdist inspired Operatic anti-epic of place, of Reno… Reno, Nevada.

A live theater
In a desert dream
… A memory place, between



In a town that knows no time
Machines are draped in plastic,
curtains are drawn, doors closed or left open,
An indomitable fog has settled in for an endless winter of waiting.

I follow along the road dutifully all the while knowing these frames are stages, plateaus of performance.

Sometime back, perhaps a day perhaps a century
We stopped expecting the thing itself
And learned to content ourselves with the effort.

They let him bus tables during lunch twice a week.

A live theater
In a desert dream
… A memory place, between



In a town that knows no time
Machines are draped in plastic,
curtains are drawn, doors closed or left open,
An indomitable fog has settled in for an endless winter of waiting.

Silence, isolation, despair and carefully planned chaos are all elements of her work which I find relevant to my own.

But I never said “I remember … I’m making a life, sculpting it from circumstance.”

______________________________________________

It wasn’t always bad…
Like that morning Patrick Mahony the 3rd called me a hot babe, he just said it to me ‘your one, hot babe’ and then he walked on… he didn’t even try and kiss me.

His brother worked at Friends Liquor store and parked cars at the Silver Legacy.

______________________________________________

It wasn’t always bad…
Like that morning Patrick Mahony the 3rd called me a hot babe, he just said it to me ‘your one, hot babe’ and then he walked on… he didn’t even try and kiss me.

Eggs over easy, bacon, hash browns, malt liquor and swisher sweets cigarettes…

A woman passes me on the street.

The clouds were puffy and looked like something sweet to eat, like cotton candy from the carnival that comes once a year to the SaveMart parking lot.

But I can’t see her now I just see the street sign ‘Welcome to Reno, Nevada!’

The second image is that of a woman who may be a player, a reader, or a seer.

A live theater
In a desert dream
… A memory place, between



In a town that knows no time
Machines are draped in plastic,
curtains are drawn, doors closed or left open,
An indomitable fog has settled in for an endless winter of waiting.

A live theater
In a desert dream
… A memory place, between



In a town that knows no time
Machines are draped in plastic,
curtains are drawn, doors closed or left open,
An indomitable fog has settled in for an endless winter of waiting.

She uses narrative juxtapositions that blur the line between fact and fiction, history and science fiction.

The trees don’t have leaves anymore and I can’t smell the sewer since they changed the caps.

______________________________________________

It wasn’t always bad…
Like that morning Patrick Mahony the 3rd called me a hot babe, he just said it to me ‘your one, hot babe’ and then he walked on… he didn’t even try and kiss me.

“We are the music makers”, we shouted at the cows as they look at us with their dull stares.

He got caught smoking in some rich guy’s corvette.

Then us… in a car with windows down, drinking White Zin from a box because we were out of whiskey.

Stillness (the image) as the signifier of culture
The wanderer as signifier of the primal


Stills: When speaking in film terminology, Photographs are referred to as ‘Stills’, they are a fragment: a truncated, shortened, cut, condensed, reduced, abridged or curtailed element of the whole.

But I can’t see her now I just see the street sign ‘Welcome to Reno, Nevada!’

She is selling her velvet painting again: Elvis, horses, kittens and George W. Bush.

She may be Tiresias, the blind prophet of history who lived as a woman for seven years or she may be simply a woman: waiting, playing solitaire, as expectant as the rest of us.

We move forward, reaching for a direction, we try to find our way…
We look for paths that appear but lead nowhere, except there, here.

But once, he saw me walking down 4th street and he picked me up.

That being the case, the factual claims of ‘documentary’ in photography are no longer valid.

She’d always ask me “what was it you had to do today?” and then I’d answer, “I don’t know” or perhaps, “I suppose there was something”.

Sometime back, perhaps a day perhaps a century
We stopped expecting the thing itself
And learned to content ourselves with the effort.

I’m not even sure how I got there and I don’t remember leaving…
but here I am somewhere else now, I think.

Archive: Working with the Nevada Historical Society archive I have found several references to performance and walking in frontier Nevada.