Saturday, January 24, 2015 at 9:28AM Simon Gregg has produced a wonderful book " "New Romantics; Darkness and Light in Australian Art" and includes my work. You can purchase it on Amazon here.
Tuesday, January 20, 2015 at 5:57PM What a pleasure to share and show my work to author, psychologist and general all round powerhouse, Shira Nayman. A wonderful writer (who happens to be Australian also) and author of books such as Awake in the Dark, The Listener and A Mind of Winter. It was a lively yet contemplative visit. Shira wrote to me after the visit and shared some thoughts on my works:
"I've been thinking nonstop and talking about your work...In short I just love it - what you're doing and saying and describing and making us see. I accept your invitation to the world that troubles and astonishes and ultimately awes you."
and
"I'm seeing windows and curtains and light streaming in everywhere, and in new ways, since seeing your work. And thinking a lot about the idea of Home as a place of trauma...where home can mean personal home, country, religion, ethnic group, gender, race, etc... So many striations and unexpected textures and temperatures and colors, and you capture big swaths of this visually, something I think I attempt to wrap my being/soul around in words. Very different, and yet in some ways not so different...
And I realize there's something quite word/narrative/poetic-image like about your work--your photographs are like poems, really. Lyrical and disturbing and celebratory and chock-ful of feeling but also language. Yes, there's silence all over and through them, but there are also stories echoing in those supposedly (but not really) empty spaces. Past lives, ghosts, but also the living-witness-center of each photograph (you...the photographer...the absent eyes that are in fact so present), the maker of/carrier of so many stories, whose own stories see and feel and extract the silent or echoing stories of the people who have inhabited those spaces, the people who suffered and lived and maybe died there. Through bringing your own stories to the space--in fact, I suppose, telling your own story in and through the space of others--you are also giving voice to those hidden, silent people. We hear and feel the echo of their beings in every frame. It's all so rich and at the same time visually compelling beyond."
Thank you Shira Nayman for your thoughtfulness and insights about the works and for the studio visit. Readers can read more about Shira and her collaborations via an article in the New York Times. In several of her projects Shira Nayman has collaborated with dancers, musicians and others who have interpreted her stories which speak to the complexities and fragilities and strengths of the human mind (and ultimately the human condition) when faced with trauma, oppression and life under extreme conditions. Her works are expansive in their characterization of time, place, memory and how one straddles this as in turn lives it as human existence.
Here is also another piece by Shira Nayman about an NPR special on Hannukah. Some information about the piece:
"Moon Landing" by Shira Nayman
As man first reaches the lunar surface, two young girls find an emotional common bond, through the age-old miracles of their vastly differing cultures. Nayman, who also works as a clinical psychologist, is the author of Awake in the Dark, a novella and stories; and The Listener, a novel. She teaches at Columbia University.
Sunday, January 11, 2015 at 7:33AM One of my images from the Double Vision series was used on the front of this wonderful collection of poems by ECU professor John Hoppenthaler and published by Carnegie Mellon Press. Just released it can be purchased here on Amazon.
Front image Untitled 3 from the Double Vision series. Original image 40" x 50", 2011
Sunday, January 11, 2015 at 7:11AM Some installation shots I found in the archive...from my solo show at the 1912 gallery at Emory & Henry College in Virginia.
Monday, December 8, 2014 at 10:08AM @ SPE National HQ, Cleveland OH.
I'm thrilled to be included in the exhibition Off the Web On the Wall 2 in Cleveland, Ohio. These are some installation images sent by Virginia Morrisson from the exhibition at the SPE gallery at national headquarters of the Society of Photographic Educators. The response has been very good, with many people asking how I have made the work and interested in the process. If you are in the Cleveland area, the show is up till April 2015. A big thanks to Virginia Morrison for inclusion in the show!
