the internal landscape

feb 7, full moon.

2012-02-20T02:35:00.003-05:00

Another quiet, late night, trying to read Batchen while being distracted by myself, in, out, my eyes wandering off the page and into my thoughts. It was 11pm on Tuesday, February 7. I had an early class to teach the next morning but I decided to take a walk. My head and heart have been full and sometimes it keeps me awake late into the evening.

It was cold and clear outside, with a bright full moon.
I walked alone to the lake.
I watched the light shift on the moving surface on the water.
I listened to the water move, the small waves touching the ice-tinged shore.

Untitled from Mary Zompetti on Vimeo.

mutable.

2012-02-18T17:53:00.002-05:00

The ultimate wisdom of the photographic image is to say: ‘There is the surface. Now think – or rather feel, intuit – what is beyond it, what reality must be like if it looks this way.’ Photographs, which cannot themselves explain anything, are inexhaustible invitations to deduction, speculation and fantasy. --Susan Sontag, On Photography

Memory and the concept of it is mutable, constantly in flux. Depending on the context, who is recollecting, and the condition of circumstances, memory shifts and can be perceived as both accurate and inaccurate from varying perspectives. The perception and experience of memory is fluid, transitory, ephemeral. It is not a black and white matter, it is entirely subjective and is tied directly to personal perception. Our experience of reliving the same memory can be joyful or painful, overwhelming or inconsequential depending on the present moment of perspective.

Memory is scanned constantly in the search for understanding, context, meaning. How many times have you played a situation out over and over in your mind, only to come to a different conclusion? How many times does the memory change with the replay? Another person's perception of the same moment, their memory, can be different as well. But we still look to memory for explanation. This is not to say that there is no aspect of truth in memory, but I would suggest that there is no unchanging, absolute experience.

There are parallels to the idea of the ever-fluid ways in which the photograph (and the idea of the photograph) can be interpreted - or misinterpreted. During an artist talk by Liz Deschenes at AIB, Liz made a comment about the nature of photographs that resonated with me and prompted my own inquiry. So as not to paraphrase, I will quote her directly from this article from Frieze magazine - "All photographs are simultaneously representational and abstract, constructions that have gone through a series of translations and manipulations."

It's an interesting alternative to a statement made by Edward Weston, a modernist photographer who is quoted as saying that "Only with effort can the camera be forced to lie: basically it is an honest medium...".

As with memory, photographic images are often looked to for information. We try to interpret, understand, and categorize. But again, there is no absolute truth, the photographic image is just a fragment, out of context and changeable, and the perspective of the moment shifts that interpretation. There is no set "truth" inherent to a photograph.

Considering the ephemeral nature of memory and the inherent subjective nature of the photographic image, I started pulling cropped fragments of images I have taken from my archive of work. I chose mostly out of focus areas and printed the images low resolution on translucent fabric. I hang the work in three-dimensional "stacks". The viewer cannot see all aspects of the images from any one angle and has to move around the piece for varying perspectives. This piece is definitely a "prototype"; there are display issues to contend with and I need to try it out a few different ways before settling on a structure.

Additionally, in the post dislocate from 2/14 and it was a stretch from 2/17, I am thinking of similar ideas produced in a different form from the work above, using both appropriated images from the internet (a source rife with the potential for misinterpretation, something I am continually fascinated by) and older snapshots from my archive. Less about memory, these projects consider the abstract nature of photographic interpretation as well as the following questions - How do we try to glean information from images? How do we understand/misconstrue, interpret/misinterpret and dislocate the components?

it was a stretch.

2012-02-17T18:06:00.000-05:00

dislocate.

2012-02-14T23:32:00.002-05:00

dislocate |disˈlōkāt; ˈdislōˌkāt|

verb [ trans. ]
disturb the normal arrangement or position of (something, typically a joint in the body) : he dislocated his shoulder in training.
• (often be dislocated) disturb the organization of; disrupt : trade was dislocated by a famine.
• (often be dislocated) move from its proper place or position : the symbol is dislocated from its political context.

fragmented perception

2012-02-03T12:14:00.001-05:00

In an email conversation about the images in the last two posts (here and also here),
I was sent this excerpt from an Emily Dickinson poem:

tell all the truth but let it slant
success in circuit lies
too bright for our infirm delight
the truth's superb surprise.

•••

The work is taking on several directions right now, with (to state it very simply at the moment) ideas of varying perception being a common thread.

I'm mostly in the thinking/planning/writing/researching stages. I am shooting both still images and video clips as well as dipping into my "archive" of old images. I am thinking also about the re-contextualization of imagery and in a larger sense, of perception/memory.

I see three possible trajectories:
1. Images in various forms (single/diptych/triptych)
2. Two specific video projects
3. A three dimensional piece involving translucent images

I'm also finding myself thinking and approaching the work in a more abstract and less linear manner.

•••

What I need more than anything else right now is simply time - time to think and time to work. As with many of us, time is in short supply. Keeping it all in balance is a juggling feat - I'm teaching 4 classes in 3 different locations as well as working about 30 (flexibly timed, fortunately) administrative hours.

Time for the work comes at intervals never long enough - a few hours in the morning, an hour break between classes, or as is happening recently, into the wee hours of the night (early morning?). I'm mostly calm, though - in ways I didn't used to be.

And life continues around us, doesn't it - there are responsibilities to my friends, family, students, living spaces to clean and maintain, bills to pay, emails to send, calls to make, etc - never mind actually making time and space to be social on occasion...

I have found myself back in the position of "compassionate listener" recently as well - taking that supremely important time to sit across from someone in my kitchen, on the phone or even via text, to listen and to help in whatever way I can, to be present. In concurrence, my herbal medicine knowledge has been called upon with several people over the past few weeks, more than usual, actually. I'm grateful for the opportunity to both engage that intuitive side of myself and to help, it's a good counter-balance.

It feels right in the larger scheme as well; many dear, busy people in my life helped me in incredibly generous ways during the darkest moments of the past summer and fall. Generosity is a circle.

•••

And circling back to the work - there have been several artists/writings coming up in my research that have been influential. Looking now at Moyra Davey, Uta Barth and Stan Brakhage, among others. Reading about phenomenology and psychogeography. Having conversations with both my artist friends locally and AIB peers about both teaching practices, the art-making process and the concepts informing the work, both mine and theirs. Excited also to be working with both Liz Deschenes and Joy Episalla and to see where their thoughts and feedback lead.

moving through space.

2012-01-29T22:38:00.001-05:00

(Click on the images to view larger...)

light shift

2012-01-27T00:58:00.005-05:00

Just got these negatives back from the lab this week. I made these photographs shortly before the residency in late December, early in the morning of the winter solstice. It was a beautiful day. Something was changing, and something unknown seemed about to change. My sense was not inaccurate.

I'll admit, I was pretty irritated when I picked up this batch though; none of the new film I had taken last week post-residency came out; the film was blank. I was foiled by the mirror lockup on a lens I am borrowing. A good moment, perhaps, to practice non-attachment? It was disappointing though, as I was more interested in seeing what was was happening now with my changes in approach.

But, once I spent some time with this work, I started think about these questions and ideas...

How do we move through/observe/interact with space?
How does a slight shift in perspective change perception?

(I recommend clicking on this image to view larger...)

organizing my thoughts...

2012-01-23T01:13:00.000-05:00

Saturday morning breakfast...

When I was in Boston for my residency, a few internal switches were flipped. I literally feel different and most of this is positive. I think that I am in transitional point in my work; much is changing and this is a good thing. Many of my assumptions and ideas are evolving in ways I would not have expected and I am glad. I had a few truly pivotal conversations/suggestions during the residency that provided direction, both in regards to my work and with my outlook on the bigger picture. I am fortunate and thankful to work with such great people.

I came back with a fair amount of energy and I very much want to keep that momentum going, especially since I have an intense schedule ahead for the next few months. I’ll be teaching 4 classes and continuing to run the Photo program/facilities at BCA while working on this second semester. Additionally, there will also likely be major transitions to deal with in the personal arena over the next few months. (Cue deep breathing.)

What I really want to do right now is focus on my work. And that is what I have been doing in nearly every moment outside of my obligations. I’m reading, writing, making images/video and spending quite a bit of time alone, working and thinking – something I was nearly unable to do for months. While I obviously wouldn’t describe this as completely easy right now, in general I feel pretty calm and focused. And strangely enough, I feel like I have more energy than I’ve had in many years. There is a sense of rightness developing.

I am starting to be able to hear myself think. After so much being so suddenly and dramatically blown apart this past summer, I need this.

While the transition from the active, in-person AIB community in the city to the quietness iciness of northern VT was admittedly a little jarring, this week was productive. I shot 4 rolls of film, a set of short video clips, organized my notes, wrote my semester summary, ordered books, read some Sontag, submitted a AIR application, submitted some work to a show in CA, went to an orientation at VCam (free video equipment! free Final Cut Pro trainings!), started teaching one class and caught up with good friends here…. whew. Despite all that, I am actually still feeling behind (dealing with the house, teaching prep, emails, finding a mentor, etc. etc. etc.), but it will get done…

Not kidding about the ice.

I'll be spending alot of time here...

And here again I find myself up way too late, slightly delirious with tiredness, drinking peppermint tea and thinking, thinking, thinking…

The Eggleston Riot, or Notes on Teaching

2012-01-18T01:08:00.003-05:00

A little something left on the lectern...

Over the 7 or so years during which I have been working with college students, my teaching approach has continuously changed as I rework my materials and thoughts surrounding teaching. When I first started learning photography myself in the late 90’s, I was taught in a traditional, craft-based vein. My teachers rarely talked about meaning or context for the work. I carried that craft-centric model forward when I first began teaching my own classes.

While I still believe that solid skills with the medium are important, I understand better now the importance of exposing my students to a variety of work and ideas surrounding the practice of making right from the start. I’m finding that it’s about striking a balance in these time-constrained foundation courses of both teaching the skills and teaching students how to begin to engage in the context of contemporary art. You need both.

My first day of teaching for the Spring semester was today, a section of Photo 1. This class is centered on the black and white darkroom process. The class runs weekly for 3 hours, which when you consider the learning curve involved with getting a handle on using a manual camera and understanding the process, isn’t much time. However, this semester, I am committed to incorporating more discussion surrounding meaning and context into the class as well as to exposing students to more artists. If that cuts into the hands-on time, we’ll work around it.

There is always a level of apprehension that comes with the first day. I can generally intuit how the semester is going to go and how the dynamics of the group may be after observing my class during that first meeting. I also know that my own mental state can reflected back to me when I am teaching – it’s like a mirror in some regards.

My class today had 12 students, with majors ranging from Graphic Design to Criminal Justice to Computer Networking to Elementary Education; no art majors. Most students had experience with a digital SLR and most had never worked with film. Reasons for taking the course were varied, with some students stating that they were interested in the “roots” of the process, or that they were simply just curious about film. Personally, I still find the whole silver-based process to be pretty amazing – there really is nothing like watching a print appear in the quiet orange light of the darkroom – and so I really do enjoy sharing this excitement with my students.

I brought a selection of work to show my class today. We started with some photographers we all know, Ansel Adams, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Minor White, Edward Weston… I brought up images and just asked the class to share what they thought and we talked about the basics of approach – the fully controlled landscape image, the decisive moment, abstraction, ect, as well as basic elements of composition. One young woman commented the sensuous nature of Weston’s iconic pepper and we then compared that image to one of his nudes. Seeing their sometimes-unadulterated excitement for the images was great, this class had thoughtful comments and opinions. Everyone who teaches will understand how nice it is when this happens; there is nothing as depressing as those silent, blank stares. We looked next at Julia Margaret Cameron, Sally Mann, Diane Arbus and Man Ray. The dream-like Romantic imagery of Cameron incited more varied opinions, some students seeming to completely fall in love and others feeling put off by the technical differences from the more traditional work we viewed first. Man Ray incited a flurry of desire to solarize. Arbus amused some and freaked out others.

We took a break and I showed them William Eggleston and Moyra Davey, two artists I am interested in at the moment. The first image we looked at led us straight into a conversation I hadn’t planned – I love it when things manifest in the classroom in interesting and unexpected ways. This image was Eggleston’s photograph of a light bulb on a red ceiling. There was some serious and heated questioning of the validity of the work. One student finally said, exasperated, “Can you just shoot anything and call it art?” Which led to an interesting dialogue on context and intent bringing us to look at some non-photographic conceptual work. We moved to Davey’s piece, The Coffee Shop/The Library. They struggled with some of the less aesthetic images but the interactive nature of this project sparked interest, which led to the next question from another student – “Why call it photography?” Yes, why indeed? It's good to question our preconceived notions of what photography is.

I’m excited to see where the conversation leads with this group and to see what manifests in my other sections next week. Today was a simple and welcome reminder of why I so enjoy teaching - and that it's really to my and my students' benefit to continually change and evolve my teaching practices.

Video Stills: Sunday

2012-01-17T00:32:00.000-05:00

The start of something...

transition north.

2012-01-15T23:32:00.000-05:00

Back in Vermont, it's almost 11pm. It's extremely cold (4 below zero) and quiet.

I am simultaneously tired and energetic, calm and wired. My body and my brain are pacing; I'm finding myself wandering around the house, feeling like I need something, or maybe that I need to do something. Laundry? Bills? Tea? A snack? Maybe I should prep one of my classes? I did want to make a new presentation for my first lecture on Tuesday.... Or maybe I should make grocery list? Having food in the house is generally a good idea. I could unpack... or upload video clips from the trip home? Catch up on correspondence? Research? Read? Take some images? Organize my pile of notes?

I'm not choosing very well. I've opened the fridge five times, finally settling on a piece of cheese which I ate standing at the counter. I stared at my tea shelf and even that seemed like an impossible decision. Laundry and bills feel like too much of a commitment at this hour.... maybe I just need to hang out with my cat and call it a night. I think I'll add some plain nettle tea and Susan Sontag to that plan and table the rest of it until the morning.

turning.

2012-01-15T10:53:00.001-05:00

There are moments when everything changes so quickly and so intensely... and the consequential feelings surrounding these moments then change with equal speed and intensity in ways unexpected. The explosion happens, chaos ensues – and then the dust settles. You look around, disoriented, and everything looks different. The silence after is deafening, resounding. The grief for what has been lost is real; explosions can cause injury and destruction, but when you look up you realize that a major blockade you didn’t even see in front of you was removed. The potential for light is so real that you’re completely blinded by it. You feel your insides rearranging – the emotional becomes physically tangible - it’s uncomfortable in its uncertainty, but you realize that the newness and the difference is so profound that you could never go back to having that blockade in front of the sun…

an archive of mornings.

2012-01-13T07:57:00.001-05:00

Untitled from Mary Zompetti on Vimeo.

In this semester's critical theory seminar, we had a short assignment to create an archive. This short video is simply 3 moments from my mornings for 4 days, all taken during the time shortly after waking. This is a fairly quick edit.

interruptions.

2012-01-03T13:19:00.001-05:00

Untitled from Mary Zompetti on Vimeo.

During my time in Iceland, I took some short video clips. I merged these clips together into a longer piece as a reflection on being lost in the landscape...

I then began to consider the nature of intrusive thoughts and how quickly these thoughts can pull us out of the present moment, causing us to project backwards into memory and forward into concern... so often I would lose myself in thought and I would stop noticing my surroundings.

When I returned home, I took short clips of my changing home, and integrated these clips into the longer Iceland piece – these “home” clips serve to distract the viewer from the landscape - the “present” - and to comment on the nature of thought process as well as the illusion of memory and projection...

"Inhabited space transcends geometrical space."

2011-12-21T00:58:00.000-05:00

…every corner of the house, every angle in a room, every inch of secluded space in which we like to hide, or withdraw into ourselves, is a symbol of solitude for the imagination..

Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space.

late night light.

2011-12-13T00:51:00.000-05:00

week 3: a white, blank page?

2011-11-18T09:05:00.001-05:00

During a pivotal moment in my own personal story, on one of the hardest nights of my life, I saw this update on Facebook. In the time since, I have had multiple and varied reactions to it...

...from hopefulness to confusion to indignation to rage to despair to empathy to understanding to pain to...

And so in this third and final week of the Facebook project, I consider the "white, blank page", the story we write on it, and the roles we choose/are given in our stories.

For better or for worse, I believe that we are always informed by our past experiences. Everything carries forward. I would suggest that there is no true "white, blank page." There is no true "clean slate". Our experiences are always somewhere in our consciousness or in our subconscious, there is always some effect.

But what do you do with these experiences, past and present?
Do you face your life head on, or do you run from it?
Do you stuff it away, or do you find the courage to look at yourself?
Do you do well by others in the process?

If there is anything I've observed over the last 4 months, it's that you can't stop a runaway train. You can't control the behaviors of others. Sometimes people fail us. Sometimes communication breaks down. It's easy to obsess, to fall into a trap of overthinking and longing... to hope for the unattainable only to reach out and find that everything has changed, in an instant. I could speculate that social media provides us with a minefield of opportunities to feed that fire, to interpret or misinterpret, to push our own boundaries.

I still come home, wander around my quiet house, and think -
"What the hell happened?
Who are you?
Do I know you?
Did I ever?
And do I know me?"

How can the roles we play change so fast?

As I said in my post in the first week of the project, "the heart of my intention was about stepping forward into a role… to blur the boundaries, to consider the choices made, present and past, and to visually speak."

I created a virtual role in the "theatre" of social media for the last 3 weeks. I initially wanted to push and blur the boundaries of being "appropriate". The perception of my role was varied to different people. And really, how is it not all a performance in some regards? This doesn't mean that it is not possible to be authentic, it is just a suggestion that our roles in life are constantly changing. Sometimes we are the hero, sometimes we are the damsel in distress, and sometimes we are the villain. We play different roles in different stories and from different perspectives. How well do we play our parts? What roles are we expected to play?

Again, I consider my muse. She is a villain in my story, no question there. For someone else, she is the damsel in distress, and perhaps for someone else, the hero...

Her presence in my thoughts and my solitary experience of abandonment, betrayal, sadness and anger I face - it will follow me for a while... but I can choose how much I let in...

week 2: invasion (every time i think of you)

2011-11-12T20:26:00.001-05:00

…otherwise known as I just can't take a break from her.

How do we control our thoughts? How are our lives affected by the mind loop? What do we let in? How are our mental barriers holding up? How are we invaded?

In week 1, I introduced my muse, although I didn’t define her role in my life. As mentioned in this post, I recently saw her image on Facebook.

She was wearing a blue mask and a cape…. Her gaze was enigmatic… Her bed was in the background… I’ve never met her....We made virtual eye contact on the screen...My stomach dropped... And I couldn’t get her image out of my head.

That's because it’s incredibly difficult to get images of “the other woman”, out of your head…

Trust me, I’ve tried.

My husband left our relationship rather abruptly this summer, shortly after I returned from my first 10 day MFA residency in Boston. I didn’t see it coming. It’s been and continues to be a profoundly disturbing, crushing and confusing experience for me. It’s forced me to start redefining my life, the art I make, my identity and my sense of home and safety overnight.

I have struggled with what to reveal and what not to reveal publicly.

I was definitely blindsided, overtaken.

My mind has been going full tilt ever since. I began to consider the nature of invasive thought patterns and the nature of obsession. I felt like this woman had invaded and permeated my intimate life. In the first week, as stated, I recreated her profile image and named her my "muse". I considered the ideas of boundaries, privacy and choice as well as the roles we play and the kind of voice I am "allowed" to have.

For the second week, I decided to conduct an experiment, a performance. I carried the mask (from her recreated Facebook profile image) with me everywhere for five days. Every day, every time I thought of her, I forced myself to stop what I was doing, to put on the mask and to photograph myself.

My goal was to create a visual for the endless loop in my mind and a visual for the level of disruption that this kind of distraction can cause. The images walk you through my day, the gamut of emotions I experience moment to moment, and the situations during which I find myself disappear into my thoughts, whether I want to or not. Each day, I posted an album on Facebook. In total, there were over 200 images – and I am certain that I missed many times when I could have taken more.

In the first week of the project, I enjoyed the comparative irony of crossed boundaries and how societal value judgments of respectability and line-crossing could be placed on both me and my muse. In this second week of the project, I noticed a different kind of comparison that revealed itself to me more as the week wore on...

And how does using Facebook feed obsession? Why look at all? What is real, anyway? How does social media excite our curiosity? And does it really help us? How do we extricate from and cut off the amount of information consumed? How do we gracefully (or not so gracefully) exit the room, mentally and virtually?

boundaries. choices. voice.

2011-11-03T13:20:00.000-04:00

The first week of this project is concluding, and I wanted to share some thoughts on the major themes of this week ...

As defined, a muse is...

Recently, I saw an image of a woman on Facebook; I will be referring to her as my muse. I have never met this woman or interacted with her in any way, but this person has entered my life and affected it profoundly. Not a day goes by when I don’t think of her. I had seen images of her before, but there was something about this one that resonated with me. The image is a self-portrait. It was taken in a mirror with an iPhone, in her bedroom, and she was wearing a blue mask and a cape. What was it about this image that affected me? Was it her mask? Was it the reflection of her bed in the background? Was it her gaze? Was it the timing of when she posted the photo? All I can say is that I looked at the image, my stomach dropped, and I knew something, viscerally. My intuition has been accurate.

I began then, as I mentioned at the start of this project in the form of a series of “status updates”, to think more about Facebook as an entity and how we interact with it. What do we put out to the world? What is appropriate behavior? How do we interpret or misinterpret? What are the boundaries of acceptable, and how is privacy protected, or not? The answers are fluid, situational, and gray.

I thought about all of this, both in relation to the overarching issues surrounding social media, as well as in relation to my own personal situation. I thought about the active and passive role of Facebook in my own life. I observed choices made and roles played. My current public role, both imposed and chosen in my own situation had been to fade into the background, to relinquish my voice and place, and to be appropriate. I was directed to accept and move on, in short order. I don’t believe in airing dirty laundry on Facebook but the time had come for me to shake the apple tree a bit...

I decided to consider Facebook as a virtual performance venue to address a series of concepts for a pre-set period of time. I decided, after much thought, discussion and intentional questioning of my motives, to replicate the image in question, using myself as the subject of my muse’s self portrait. I bought the costume, I arranged my furniture, and I shot the image in question as a close replica. The heart of my intention was about stepping forward into a role… to blur the boundaries, to consider the choices made, present and past, and to visually speak.

Creating this image wasn’t a comfortable experience for me, and I’m sure that it’s not comfortable for certain individuals to view. I had to let go of the fear of making others angry and the fear of getting more hurt; not easy. Given the effect my muse has had on my personal life, she may have been more discreet with her images and interactions. Of course, this calls into debate the idea of privacy in social media. Do we know who is looking? Are they someone who we want watching us interact online?

I will admit, I have enjoyed the comparative irony of crossed boundaries, perceived respectability and inappropriateness, and how definitions of each could be applied freely to both my muse and to myself in radically different ways.

The second week of the project will shift focus and will begin on Friday evening...

week 1: i consider my muse.

2011-10-30T00:33:00.001-04:00

lost in the landscape...

2011-10-22T22:04:00.000-04:00

Slowly, immensity becomes a primal value, a primal, intimate value. When the dreamer really experiences the word immense, he sees himself liberated from his cares and thoughts, even from his dreams. He is no longer shut up in his weight, in the prisoner of his own being.

- The Poetics of Space, Gaston Bachelard

a very quiet evening.

2011-10-14T22:07:00.000-04:00

a strange dream from august...

2011-10-13T23:43:00.000-04:00

night of august 8...we were driving on the highway.... you were driving very, very fast...suddenly, there was a stopped car the road...you swerved to avoid it...we went over the median to the oncoming lane, then totally underneath the highway in a full circle, and back up again, just beyond the blockage... just beyond a horrible accident... we narrowly avoided it.... we made it...

desolate landscapes.

2011-10-11T08:10:00.000-04:00

It was late in the day on August 19. I was somewhere on Route 35 in the interior of Iceland, heading towards the Langjokull glacier, nearly as far as I could go with my small car...

I was a little uneasy here; unusual, because I felt so safe alone in Iceland. The clouds were building, it was dead silent, there was no one around. The landscape was vast, monochrome.

My mind was there and here, here and there. My mind never shut off, and emotions ran high. My silent joke with myself was that my emotions were changing as rapidly as the Icelandic weather....

I stood in the silence, I shot some film in the rain.

August 19 was a full day... that evening, I checked into to my hostel in Laugarvatn. Every transition to a new sleeping space was more overwhelming than it should have been...

I walked to the Fontana geothermal baths once I settled in. It was harder to relax than I wanted it to be. I imagined alternative realities where the there and the here were side by side in the water. I ate some dinner, I went to sleep.

...I woke up the next morning, the 20th, from a vivid dream. I read now what I wrote about it then and my head hurts. I went to breakfast, I shot some images as part of my morning practice. I drove away...

this thing...

2011-10-02T10:24:00.000-04:00

in the bedroom, i consider and i change...

2011-09-29T21:49:00.000-04:00

The voices of the past do not sound the same in the big room as in the little bed chamber, and calls on the stairs have yet another sound. Among the most difficult memories, well beyond any geometry that can be drawn, we must recapture the quality of the light; then come the sweet smells that linger in the empty rooms, setting an aerial seal on each room in the house of memory. Still farther it is possible to recover not merely the timbre of the voices, "the inflections of beloved voices now silent" but also the resonance of each room in the sound house. -The Poetics of Space, Gaston Bachelard.

stark.

2011-09-26T20:20:00.002-04:00

two nights, two very different dreams...

2011-09-24T22:25:00.000-04:00

...after night two.

a morning trend I could do without

2011-09-22T09:35:00.000-04:00

the morning after realizing...

2011-09-20T22:59:00.000-04:00

Vik, Iceland was the most beautiful place I have ever been.
I never did photograph the landscape there that morning...
But I did have heart-shaped waffles with Sweet Cicely, Angelica and Dandelion syrup.
That was comforting...

we live fixations, fixations of happiness.

2011-09-17T13:26:00.001-04:00

Here are some images from the day I spent shooting interiors of my room in Reykjavik (see post from one month ago today). I remember feeling a calm descend as I focused and worked, holed up in my tiny space. I am thinking now about some of the questions I was asking myself then. I consider the last month since then.

I look at these images and I can remember that near-cozy feeling, of reality suspended, even for a moment...

I am here alone in my kitchen now, a month later. A cool sunny Saturday in September, with my coffee and toast. I am trying to paint a cozy picture for myself - it sounds nice, doesn't it? In reality, I am trying hard to breathe, trying hard to be, trying hard to focus, trying to hard to find my voice under a crushing and endlessly perplexing, unexpected grief. I stretch my hand out through a fog and reach nothing. There is literally no making sense of any of it. And so I need to pull back into myself.

As I write this, and consider this moment, I feel a simultaneous tiny release of pressure followed by the self-consciousness of overexposure. Ah well.

I had a great phone meeting with my advisor Jan Avgikos last Sunday. She looked through my recent work, and I expressed this concern about being too self-revelatory, too overtly emotional in the work. She quelled those fears and encouraged me to just make the images and to see what came of it. To not hold back in this moment.

I'm currently reading The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard, and I'll leave you with this passage:

"We live fixations, fixations of happiness. We comfort ourselves by reliving memories of protection. Something closed must retain our memories, while leaving them their original value as images. Memories of the outside world will never have the same tonality as those of the home and, by recalling these memories, we add to our store of dreams; we are never real historians, but always near poets, and our emotion is perhaps nothing but an expression of a poetry that was lost."

the darkness intensified in the valley

2011-09-15T08:36:00.000-04:00

sleep patterns follow you.

2011-09-02T23:32:00.000-04:00

shift.

2011-08-22T18:49:00.000-04:00

Some iphone test shots...
shooting this kind of work with the RB67....

The best laid plans...

2011-08-17T08:27:00.000-04:00

I left the June residency inspired with many ideas for my work in neighborhoods, thinking about the urban-suburban experience, borders and property lines, and the interaction of humans and nature.

You know what they say about the best-laid plans...

All of that has been blown out of the water utterly and completely at this point. I literally came home from the residency into a huge storm of chaos and heartbreak that escalated rapidly. Not quite the way I anticipated starting the semester and nothing I saw coming.

So what to do now? What kind of art do you make when everything you assume, know and trust changes? Well, if you are me, you don't make art about something irrelevant to that experience. That might work for minor incidents - I don't make art about every stubbed toe or argument. But when it's something huge, obviously it's going to play into your work.

This has led to a series of other questions, such as - How do I embrace expressing something personal without making it explicitly about the details of my own experience? How do I avoid sharing and revealing too much? Or too little? How do I make it about universal human experience, not just about my own experience? How personal is too personal, but how detached is too detached? And how do I fit it into the discourse of theoretical issues that as an MFA candidate, I must address?

My advisor, Jan, asked me if it felt right to make pictures right now. It does, very much so. And so I continue on. I am struggling with the reading/writing - I have to admit, I'm not focusing well (my mind wanders even reading the newspaper at this moment in time). But that will come with time.

...so what kinds of images have I been making? Certainly nothing I thought I would be making. But interestingly enough, it's almost always comes back to the same issues for me, which is exploring the idea of home. What IS home, anyway? How do we create it? What do we do when it changes? How do we find home and comfort in alternate places and in unexpected circumstances? How does our own energy and the energy of the moment effect how these spaces look and feel.... and how do interiors reflect the emotional landscape?

The images below were the beginning of this exploration. I found myself alone for the weekend in a motel in Maine and I started to think about some of these issues. I wondered then, how do we "nest" in these more sterile places? How do we insert ourselves?

I had a very productive first mentor meeting about this work a few days ago with Christine Collins, who teaches at AIB, Mass Art and the Maine Photo Workshops. We discussed many of these issues and I left with some ideas and encouragement to explore further. I am currently on a solo trip in Iceland, and so I am shooting in this vein here (I'll admit, it's pretty funny to me to be in Iceland, a land of dramatic landscape, and to be spending my morning shooting my bed in the hotel...) The last few images above felt like the strongest, and I'm experimenting with being less controlled in my compositions and content - many of these images feel quite controlled. I am also looking at the interiors of Todd Hido and Stephen Shore and they will likely both come into play once I being doing more research and writing.

In other news, I went to an amazing island off the coast of Reykjavik yesterday. It was full of standing stones, which I found out later were made by Richard Serra. Beautiful. Additionally, there is a Louise Bourgeois exhibit here, so I'm heading into town to see that shortly. You know, once I shoot more images of my tangled sheets and my bowl of cereal on my bed....

Home Studio

2011-07-30T18:28:00.000-04:00

My scanner and printer arrived, and I finally set up my home studio today. It's a sweet little room in our house that overlooks the garden, and it also doubles as my herb room (I recently finished an apprenticeship at Sage Mountain). You can't actually see said scanner/printer in this photo (printer is to the left, scanner is behind the desk), but it gives you a sense of the space. Here's to getting some work done - life continues amidst chaos...

Self Portrait

2011-07-21T17:53:00.000-04:00

With my Rollei, aka The Brick.

The Aftermath is a Tangle.

2011-07-18T21:33:00.000-04:00

I've been thinking about the energy a place holds, how we create home spaces/nests, and how those spaces, even when empty, can feel stable or chaotic, safe or unsecure...

the water moved in...

2011-06-15T18:15:00.000-04:00

hazy.

2011-05-19T22:44:00.000-04:00

left there.

2011-05-08T23:33:00.000-04:00

grey day

2011-04-17T22:08:00.000-04:00

photographic beginnings...

2011-04-01T17:56:00.001-04:00

In 1999, I was living in Boston and attending The Boston Conservatory for music. I rode the T everywhere, to school, to work and for fun. As I rode, I became fascinated by all of the reflections on the windows of the train, and started thinking about photography - about what it would be like to create an image from what I saw. I had never used a manual camera before and had no experience at all.... in fact, due to some idiosyncrasies in my education, I'd never even taken a visual arts class. At the time, I was becoming dissatisfied with studying classical music and in a fit of spontaneity, I decided to take a leave of absence from school. I bought a used manual SLR camera, a Pentax K-1000 from Bromfield Camera in Downtown Crossing. The camera store showed me how to load film and how to balance the meter and so I wandered around Boston shooting my first rolls of black and white film.

A few weeks later, I moved to Cape Cod for the rest of the summer and co-managed a youth hostel in Truro. I brought my "new" camera along. I had a few rolls of slide film, and I mostly just photographed my surroundings. I loved it.

That fall, I enrolled at New England School of Photography in Boston. After putting all of my resources towards studying music, this was a huge and probably not well-thought out change, but it was one of the best decisions I've ever made. Now, 12 years later, I am getting ready to begin my MFA at the Art Institute of Boston in a low-residency program - practically across the street from NESOP.

As I was cleaning out my home office last weekend to create some work space for myself, I found this image buried in my desk - it's one of my first images, shot on my bedside table in the summer of 1999 on the Cape, before I had even an inkling of what an f-stop was...

and then...

2011-03-13T20:54:00.000-04:00

My exhibition, and then... is opening at the 215 College Gallery in downtown Burlington this coming Friday, March 18 from 5-8pm. I'll be showing 24 large color prints and 52 tiny Argus prints...!

We'll be skipping the cheese and crackers for this one - staying in theme, food will be a neighborhood cake and coffee potluck!

this collection of work is an exploration of living spaces-
our homes, outside and in.
where inanimate objects become animate
and we lose ourselves in their stories...

Center Forward 2011

2011-03-11T12:26:00.000-05:00

Excited to have this piece chosen for the exhibition Center Forward 2011, coming up this summer in Fort Collins, Colorado at the Center for Fine Art Photography!

Not Much of an Ottoman

Info about the exhibition is here.

CENTER FORWARD 2011 - As the dynamic conversation of photography continues to evolve, we are engaged in moving this dialogue forward. The theme is open and all subjects are eligible. Please join us in the conversation.

kitchen.

2011-02-27T22:47:00.000-05:00

come to bed.

2011-02-25T23:03:00.000-05:00

blossom

2011-02-22T21:18:00.000-05:00

frozen lake, from the sky

2011-02-12T13:19:00.000-05:00

Took my Holga camera up into the tiny airplane...

Whee!

small houses.

2011-02-04T17:02:00.000-05:00

subzero.

2011-01-25T23:00:00.000-05:00

It was about 10 degrees below zero on Sunday afternoon,

With a wind chill of about 25 below.

...a perfect temperature for being in the middle of a frozen lake, right?

So I took my Holga plastic camera out...

Because I was getting stir crazy and wanted to see the lake ice -

It's a frozen white expanse - pretty captivating, I think.

Here are a few images from the bridge, from either side, and from the way home.

Drink Me.

2011-01-22T17:00:00.000-05:00

Also, updated my website with new images today - go to the "and then..." gallery in the portfolio to view...

Noir

2011-01-11T22:21:00.000-05:00

Been on a bit of a Film Noir (and red wine) kick lately...
I'm loving it.
Here are few images of mine from a few years ago.
Makes me want to have some Noir-esque photo shoots.

late in the evening.

2010-12-11T16:03:00.000-05:00

beyond the fence...

2010-12-03T14:56:00.000-05:00

meet curious, the duck.

2010-12-01T14:34:00.000-05:00

He lives on the other side of the fence...

around the neighborhood.

2010-11-29T18:53:00.000-05:00

A Beautiful Affair...

2010-11-27T17:48:00.001-05:00

Dusty.

2010-11-13T19:53:00.002-05:00

october 2010
rollei SL66
kodak portra NC 120 film

Evening.

2010-11-06T10:26:00.002-04:00

at the fair.

2010-11-01T22:00:00.000-04:00

From my yearly, much anticipated trip to the Champlain Valley Expo with my occasionally trusty plastic Holga camera. You can see more from previous years here.

september 2010
holga
tmax 400 film

sunday afternoon.

2010-10-31T16:00:00.001-04:00

yes, it's a corded landline...

2010-10-25T10:00:00.002-04:00

...and yes, it's in my house and yes, it's my primary phone.

it was quiet.

2010-10-23T17:00:00.000-04:00

interior spaces... nighttime ramblings.

2010-10-21T22:56:00.001-04:00