A Rare and Common Vigor

Aging is at once the most common thing that we share also uniquely uncommon in how its vigor grows while our own wanes. This personal ode on aging is intended to be viewed unmounted and unframed to suggest its--and our--impermanence.

Aging is a fitting subject for a personal ode. It is at once the most common thing that we share and is also uniquely uncommon in how its vigor grows while our own wanes. Given that theme I do not want this work to suggest a misleading permanence. So I intend that it be exhibited unmounted and unframed (I have a preferred, unobtrusive hanging solution). I wish there was a similar way to suggest perishability to those viewing the work online.

All the ode’s images are multilayered photography. This is true of much of my work. But layering is especially useful when dealing with memory or with condensing temporal connections between past and future. I value layering for another reason: It calls forth the inherent madeness of any photograph, the recognition of which can help us respond to AI as a subset of shaped, purposeful communication. So “to what purpose?” may be a more urgent and useful question than “real or fake?”

My presence in each work ranges from a generally representational one to one obscured in ways suggesting a need to look beyond facial recognition to grasp any life. For me, the detailed presentation of the subject need not be central to portraiture but merely be one of many elements whose inclusion may help the observer form a subject identity and connect it to his or her understanding of human lives. Even when the subject is well known the portrait is a much about a life, a person, as it is about a specific, named life. We may know that we are viewing a named individual but we respond to that person as a construction we build from the information in the portrait–an identity, real and defined but without history or verification. We know what we know about that identity and feel what we feel. If we are wise enough we recognize the difference between our constructions and the lives of the subjects--and the value of understanding those constructions.

I am uncomfortable with calling my work altered or manipulated. See it as intentional and constructed. I want my work to at least whisper to viewers that what they see and hear, here and everywhere, was made and requires questioning and interpretation--and that it is up to them to weigh its meaning, its reliability, and how it connects with their lives and their actions.

With three exceptions the layers are all photographic: Looks Vascular to Me contains a layer created with multiple custom digital text brushes; Dances with Doctors includes a layer of a photograph of an oil painting of mine, which itself used a photograph of mine as part of its set; and Questioning Legacy includes a photograph of a pencil self portrait drawn from a photograph. The layer count ranges from two in “Looks Vascular to Me” and “A Study in Grey and Graying” (the latter contains three layers but only two images) to six in “Questioning Legacy.”