As artists, we channel the outer world through our deepest inner mind, and then spew it back out for everyone to see (ourselves included.) I’ve been feeling creatively “bi-polar” lately… and I don’t meant diminish that actual condition, but it seems the most accurate way to describe my process. I took a road trip a few weeks ago, and looking at my images from that short jaunt, I see a very consistent approach. They look like “my” images for sure, but they also possess a quiet, staid, almost banal kind of presence. Nothing outstandingly original here, but a set of competent images. Since then, the pendulum has swung in a completely opposite direction. I’ve been shooting pinhole images, on a panoramic Holga, and a 4 x 5 wooden box camera, and the photos look nothing like the road trip photos. There is clearly a connection with some of my other work, and subject matter is more of the familiar environmental work I’ve been producing in the bosque. But after processing the film in my kitchen sink, I’ve been taking a radical approach to “post-processing” the images. I’ve been abusing the film with fire, with knives, with dirt; abrasions, scratches, bubbles, melting plastic, ash and rock. I dived deeply into an experimental phase with this direction. I am not sure where it is coming from, and I’m not sure where it is heading. I’ve overdone the technique many times, and I’ve pulled myself back from the edge of complete destruction of the film and number of times. I’ve also been fighting the overthinking that come along with most of my creative endeavors. What does it all mean? Is it any good? Why? Who cares? Still, I feel this direction is coming from deep inside of me, and I do have some suspicions that it is a reaction to the world we live in… well that’s fucking obvious, isn’t it? Forests are burning, edges are fraying, patience is crumbling, fevers are rising, destruction on so many fronts. Institutions are failing, stability is out of our reach, what do I have any control over? So, I am surrendering to the fire, to the dirt, to the happenstance, to the unpredictability… to existence, I suppose.
Winter in the West
A frozen moment as I left the Sundance Film Festival.