"EDGE OF CHAOS"

The photographs in “Edge of Chaos” were taken at sites in a borderline state between order and disorder. I discover haphazard scenes and compositionally orchestrate the random assortment of objects in an attempt to recognize and record the emergence of a surprising underlying cohesive whole.

“Fission” explores the coming apart of man-made structures either by demolition, dismantling, or natural disasters – sites that had a pre-existing order but are now in a state of disarray. The pictures of building demolitions document a lost era of New England town centers. The dismantled factories speak to the disappearance of jobs and industries from a bygone era while the photographs of natural disasters emphasize the power and devastation of the forces of nature. “Fusion” examines the coming together of objects. Images of scrap metal heaps and discarded possessions comment on our consumer society.

Despite this wide range of subject matter and theme, what ties the pieces together is the tenuous state of the scenes, the sense that compositional cohesion is being stretched a bit. From the mass of randomness, the rubble, the collection of rusty engine parts, the disassembled machinery, a dense canvas emerges.

At the heart of these photographs is my attempt to recognize an unexpected elegance at sites generally thought to be aesthetically barren, to hear the music buried beneath the noise, to discover those mystical, magical moments found at the Edge of Chaos.

“WAVE”

These photographs were taken at commercial fishing piers, primarily in Newport, RI and New Bedford, MA, home to the largest port for what is considered to be the most dangerous job in the United States. For an industry that is centuries old, one would think that automation would have taken over, but nothing could be further from the truth. Handling and gutting the fish, mending the nets, maintaining the engines, repairing the boats must still be done by hand.

I photograph the trawlers and docks when they are abandoned, capturing the scenes the way they were left when the fishermen and deckhands suspended their work. Despite the absence of the crew, their presence is pervasive. It is evident in the random placement of a hose, rope or net, the positioning of pulleys and cables, a door left ajar. The lack of people allows for greater emphasis on the transitional state of the site, the wear and tear from countless voyages, and the mark of the crew’s hands. Out of the chaotic mass of objects I try to extract an underlying order. Frequently my visits to the piers yield little, but on subsequent trips I find that gear has been moved, boats have come and gone, or perhaps the tide has altered their orientation. Often the changes are subtle, at times more dramatic. On occasion, a complex, loosely structured, cohesive image emerges from the scene.

Typically I compose in a traditional rectangular format but at times the subject matter speaks to me in a different way, compelling me to use different presentations – panoramas, diptychs, or grids. The grids allow for an appreciation of not only the individual photographs, but also their common elements, their relationship to adjacent pictures, and the rhythm and flow that is created by the array.

I think of this project as a collaboration with both the people who work the waterfront and the sea from which they earn their living. The forces of the sea, the hands of the crew, and the vision of the photographer join to reveal an unexpected elegance, based in movement and gesture, which arises from their co-creation.

Over the past few decades the line between fact and fiction, reality and fantasy, truth and lie, has become increasingly nebulous, ambiguous and flexible. We live in a world where facts are spun, warped and packaged, photographs and videos flawlessly doctored, sensational documentaries revealed to be fabricated and the news reported in numerous wide-ranging versions.

My process begins with discovering a peculiar, intriguing scene whose meaning is a bit ambiguous. I then try to make a compelling photograph that stands on its own, unassociated with other pictures or a verbal description – an image that engages the viewer without additional context or information. Taking cues from the photograph, I then enter keywords on the Wikipedia website and pour over the entries returned by the searches. Sentences from one or more articles are selected and in some cases combined and/or edited to compose the text that is paired with the picture. The final piece becomes an entry in a personal, evolving image-based reference that merges my photographs with words from unwitting online collaborators.

These pieces explore how our reading of an image is influenced by text and the manner in which a photograph informs the words that accompany it. They question the growing influence of the internet, the authority we attribute to it, and our dependence on it for knowledge and facts. They test the meaning of photographs and their intimacy with the truth.

Ours is an age of multiple realities. The Picture Book of Knowledge resides in one of them.

A photograph passes for incontrovertible proof that a given thing has happened. – Susan Sontag