written on Friday, October 28th, 2011
I’m now living in Dearborn, MI and have been since early February of 2011. After being moved around I’m finally settling in and getting back on my feet. It’s been one crazy year where everything I was working on pulled in another direction almost directly after the move. As the open series Fantasy in the Real World and The Real World is Just Another Illusion peaked my interest I began to move further away from traditional photography into composites almost exclusively.
My collection of “environments” and “people” from my Even Nostalgia Isn’t as Good as it Used to be series was growing at a rapid pace and suddenly all I could think of was ways of combining images together.
Execute, Enable, Programmed (2011)
Part of my Commercialism will be the New Symbol of Status While Hollywood Lies Dead series.
Why was I creating this image series? It happened after I had an epiphany one night while watching the movie “Freejack.” The title Commercialism will be the New Symbol of Status While Hollywood Lies Dead comes from the realization that one day, just like photography and the music industry, big studios will have less control over film production. In the simplest terms possible this is a consequence of technology and the internet.
Also this series needed to be done for me to really nail down my compositing techniques.
Governed by Reciprocity (2011)
Part of my Commercialism will be the New Symbol of Status While Hollywood Lies Dead series.
This series deals with iconography juxtaposed with environments on the brink of collapse. As entertainment constantly reinvents itself iconography strives to remain based on imaginary principles, principles that are residing on top of sand (or in this case abandoned environments). I decided to use “commercialism” and “hollywood” together because I don’t believe they can co-exist together indefinitely.
From my journal entry on Feb 16th, 2011 Three Images for a New Series “Commercialism will be the New Symbol of Status While Hollywood Lies Dead” [pt.1]
These images were accumulated archives dating back over two years. The lesson I learned was that throwaway shots are not always meant to be thrown away.
All of these images were based on some form of iconography. I decided to have 13 total images from this series because the number 13 is used so much in our American dollar bill
- 13 leaves in the olive branch
- 13 bars and stripes in the shield
- 13 arrows in the right claw
- 13 letters in the “E Pluribus Unum” on the ribbon
- 13 stars in the green crest above
- 32 long feathers on its right wing representing the 32º in Freemasonry
- 13 granite stones in the Pyramid. (The 13 layers represent the 13 Illuminati bloodlines)
- 13 letters in Annuit Coeptis
After this odd series (which really started after visiting the abandoned “Klining House” in Ohio) my family and I went to Florida for a week vacation. This was a very exciting time for me because up until this time I hadn’t been out of the midwest since I was bout 12 or 13 when we visited Arizona.
Working a bit backwards in terms of how I edited here is one of my favorite shots from inside of the plane.
Vaportrail (2011)
Part of my Worlds Above Us series.
From this trip I was overwhelmed with images. As of writing this section I still have images sitting on my hard-drive, waiting to be edited or merged with a series. I was able to manage one closed series from this trip. That was Memory 19. This came from sitting on the beach experimenting with binoculars over a lens. I noticed right away the somewhat random light leaks and played around with this effect while capturing and using the new magnification to stalk random groups and individuals on the beach. The concept of this series was to select the best “voyeuristic snapshots” I could out of the 100 or so I took. This particular series was shot on February 22 of 2011.
Memory 1922 (2011)
Part of my Memory 19 series.
(hint: hold the right arrow key when viewing this series to see the picture frame move)
On April 14th I happened to stay up all night sorting through these Florida images getting a sense of what to do with them. There was a false sense of urgency I had in releasing the images for selfish purposes. Fortunately I held off and released only a couple that were strong enough to stand on their own.
Complete Living (2011)
Part of my Strange Spots series.
Along with this image from Florida I decided to clean house and get through all of the images sitting around collecting virtual dust. The strongest image of the few I decided to keep “Snow Death,” which eventually landed itself in the open series Fantasy in the Real World. This image was completely real with little photoshopping. Getting the mood right was the tricky part of course, and perhaps that’s why it sat around for such a long time. Special thanks to my brother Jacob and Phil Selander for helping build this freakshow with me!
Snow Death (2011)
Part of my Fantasy in the Real World series.
King of the Jungle (2011)
Part of my Symbolism series.
The image above was set up with the help of my brother Jacob and our friend Brian Honke. This image in particular really gave me motivation to continue with my Symbolism series. At the time of writing this images from this location are still sitting, waiting to be used for another purpose.
Along with “Snow Death” led to the realization that my photography needed a new look. Static photographic images, composited or not, needed only be one weapon in my arsenal. This was a period of intense job hunting and a lot of issues were coming up for me. Of all the questions one really stuck out: “What purpose or benefit is your work serving?” Well, it really wasn’t serving anyone. All of my personal work is just that… personal. So how does one make money with these kinds of images? For the record, I still don’t know.
Point Zero (2011)
Part of my Graphic Intent series.
This image above was more or less an experiment with graphic design and I plan on pursuing this direction in the near future. The inspiration point of this image came from listening to 9-11 conspiracies and reviewing the artwork (concept digital paintings) from the game Dead Space 2. Part of me pushed for that direction to get away from photography. Sure photography would be the basis of these designs… however, it would just become another part of the picture I felt.
This thought was short-lived as an opportunity for me to travel to Alabama and document the tornado wreckage with a local church became priority #1. As much as I deeply despise organized religion there must be something said for all of the hard effort many of these church groups did while assisting the families. FEMA stepped in after the churches did most of the work and undoubtedly took most of the credit.
These images presented a new opportunity for me. Using my one and only lens at the time, the Canon 24-70 f/2.8L, I decided to take a series of vertical shots from right to left in order to encompass the entirety of what I witnessed. For these images to be fully appreciated one much take into account the surroundings. No way a “wide” 24mm shot could have captured all of this destruction. The process I used involved shooting in RAW as usual but then making four virtual copies for a total of five per shot. Exposing these shots from -4, -2, 0, 2, 4 I created an HDR image in Photomatix. Following suit with these shots used to capture the wideness of the scene I ended up sometimes as much as 20 images to create one HDR wide shot.
The time spent doing this was worth it. These images are ENORMOUS. Some being over 70 MegaPixels in size!
Drugged, Mezmorized, or Programmed (2011)
Part of my Pleasant Grove series.
So the Disrespectful, Lavish, Energetic American Torrent Flows on and on, Appealing to Ideals of Action and Self-Reinvention, Extending the Comforts of Recognition to the Uprooted (2011)
Part of my Pleasant Grove series.
Fugitive Publics and 24-7 Soap Operas (2011)
Part of my Pleasant Grove series.
After this series was completed I was exhausted from photography but felt compelled to continue. However, a vacation is what I needed and that is exactly what I did. I attended “Chas-Fest” with some friends from Spring Arbor college I hadn’t seen in awhile. Not a lot of images were taken because, like I said, I needed to get away from my camera for awhile. However, on the trip to another friends leaving the event I managed to snap some shots of us driving on the freeway.
Timwwave No.4 (2011)
Part of my Time Spent in Passing series.
The thought process behind this closed series was that so much time is literally erased from memory while driving. Think about it. You drive for 3+ hours. How much of that trip can you actually remember? Well if you’re like me, only bits and pieces stick out. Specific moments rarely stick out in the correct sequence and sometimes entire hours evaporate without remembering anything you have seen. Sure you saw a lot of things, but memory is a funny thing in that it remembers what it decides is important.
Almost immediately after getting back into town I was called on an adventure with my sisters at-the-time boyfriend Joe Krug. He wanted to show me some crazy parts of Detroit and after seeing my fair share of destruction I figured it couldn’t couldn’t hurt. We visited Detroits’ West Side, which is where many of the gangs reside. The image below is one of the abandoned school. I hope to continue this series with the same format.
Part of my When We Live Mechanical Lives We Are Living in Real Nihilism series.
The title of this open series When We Live Mechanical Lives We Are Living in Real Nihilism came about much later when I was thinking about the way people in desperate situations often continue along the same ineffective thought process. The definition of nihilism is that life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value. It really upsets me when I see places like this of Detroit. It’s not a problem with race or even money. It’s a problem with the systems installed that govern us. Given little options to succeed how do you expect many of these people find success? How do you think you would do? Before you answer that question. Remember: you are probably taking for granted more than you give credit for.
… A long break …
Almost three months passed and I was running out of creative juices. In a somewhat unstable “pen-pal” relationship fiasco I had for these three months I was presented a perspective from another creative person that helped me gain insight. It wasn’t a direction at all of my work that needed changing but rather a higher purpose and prime directive alternative. During this break I was fortunate enough to find a full-time job that paid well and left me with enough energy and time to work on my own art. Without the constant pressure of making money or getting work noticed I had the chance to step back and look at art in general.
In a long enough timeline everything becomes a cliche … If you’re looking for [a deeper meaning], don’t bother. There isn’t one. Maybe that’s the whole point.
From my most recent journal entry from October 16th, 2011
The truth is right here in this paragraph. My concepts, my ideas, my “themes,” all of that. Well, they really came to consciousness after the work was created by play and personal experimentation though the unconscious dance I play in my head while spending hours upon hours on the computer developing an image or series of images. Maybe that’s the point of all this: Evolution through (somewhat random and sporadic) mutations in a thought process and execution.
In existentialism, the individual’s starting point is characterized by what has been called “the existential attitude”, or a sense of disorientation and confusion in the face of an apparently meaningless absurd world.
My entire college career in art school did NOT teach this line of thought. In my sculpture class this kind of thinking was laughed at. “Plan it ahead” was all I heard. “Have a reason for your thought process” was drilled into me. “What is your intent?” “It’s only come to my full awareness now that NO ONE has the right to determine how “art” is created or what the correct way to make art is. In the end we’re all just people trying to figure this whole thing out. Do you honestly think YOU OR ANYONE YOU KNOW has the correct definition for art when to this day we have not agreed on a concrete definition?
