September 15, 2013

Lilliput: An Aerial Survey

I noticed recently that my close-up photographs of lichen on stone or rusted metal have the appearance of landscapes viewed from the air. This realization has inspired a new project, with the working title "Lilliput: An Aerial Survey".

Lilliput is the fictional island nation in Jonathan Swift's 1726 novel Gulliver's Travels  that is inhabited by tiny people about one-twelfth the height of ordinary humans. My project imagines what might be seen from the air if we revisited Lilliput, now uninhabited, nearly 300 years later.

The images in the project, presented as "Plates" from a scientific survey, will be close-up photographs of moss, lichen, stones, and such. They will show the forests, mountains, lakeshores, and desert landscapes on the island as they might be found viewed from above. The small mirrors the large, much as Swift's story of Lilliput was a reflection of European society at the time.

"Plate I" from "Lilliput: An Aerial Survey"

September 1, 2013

Visible, Yet Unseen

If you're like most people, you see only the things around you – people, places, and objects. With a compact camera, smartphone, Facebook, and Instagram, your photographs document “who was there and what I ate”. You post, tag, pin and tweet in a world of personal photojournalism shared through social media.

I see things differently – a world of shapes, patterns, colors, and textures. My photographs bring these attributes into view. When something is observed with no context, its separate existence ends and its characteristics become the focus. Now you see what is visible, yet unseen, and you are drawn into the intimate dialogue with my world.

The project I'm currently featuring is titled "Visible, Yet Unseen". I'll be taking twenty works from the project to Filter Photo Festival 2013 later this month for a series of portfolio reviews. If you're in the Chicago area on Saturday, September 28 you're invited to attend the free Portfolio Walk where you can see more of my work. Click here for details.

"Yellow Grain" from "Visible, Yet Unseen"