Another Viewer

I’m developing a narrative here, one about how I created a space for myself to step into my artwork, to be my own subject, to examine that subject as something wholly external to me, and yet also learning to take on the responsibilities of that image-making. It’s most likely becoming clear that I developed insights as well as blindspots, and found permissions as well as restrictions. I partly reached the end of the journey of these images, except for the final shoot.

There is a plot twist.

A couple of years ago, there was a break in at my studio. All of my cameras were stolen, and my sound recorder. My first camera, a Chinon SLR, my RZ67 Mamiya camera and accessories, my Canon G12, my M-Audio field recorder. It was my 39th birthday, and I was half way through a 9 and half month migraine. And then not long after, my studio was broken into again and completely turned over. Unexposed photograph paper was ripped open and exposed, all my belongings, strewn around. And a wallet of Polaroids were placed on the shelf with the Polaroids sitting on top of the packet. It was clear that the intruder had opened the pack and looked through the images.

I mention this, as it’s strange to be an image-maker, a thinker, an artist. I had no insurance and thus, at a low ebb in my life, I lost some of my most treasured positions. And an uninvited viewer saw these off-cuts of artworks.  The intimate and private left-overs of an art practice.

Making art and putting it out into the world means that whatever context or frame I develop for the work can be abandoned or disregarded, and I still must take responsibility for the work. And even then, the strange contingencies and chances upset that too.