Photographs from the Infinity SeriesHome Statement News CV Publications Contact Books Other Series
Film Noir revisits the themes of the classic black-and-white films of the 1940s and ’50s, but in lush, saturated colors. The solitary figures contemplating the unknown reference the ethical and philosophical dilemmas laid out in those stories. The dark, mysterious images remain unresolved, however, hinting at the increased uncertainties of contemporary life.
There are many diverse source materials for Film Noir. The urban and interior scenes are derived from magazine advertising, and architecture books. The outdoor backgrounds are taken from landscape painting, particularly the Hudson River School, but including Whistler and Hopper. The figures are appropriated from classic B&W photographers such as Winogrand and Cartier Bresson, fashion ads, sculptures, and paintings. The layered physical process of reproducing, cutting, painting, collaging and blurring, transforms the original images, giving them a new meaning in a new context. My strategy is that this hands-on analogue practice of flattening physical layers can act as a metaphor for the compression of coexistent layers of meaning—narrative, historical and personal—that resonate through the images simultaneously.
The images are meant to capture a moment just before or just after an action. The lone hero is making a difficult, dangerous choice. The weight of decision is heavy, the consequences grave and the outcome uncertain. Though I imagine the story in the context of the film noir hero, my choice of sources reflects a wider reference to the theme of rugged individualism. Wilderness pioneer, cowboy, spy, private-eye, campus rebel. existentialist anti-hero all compressed into the same narrative theme that was dominant through my coming of age in the 1960’s.
On a more personal level, these dark images of solitary figures represent the ideas and feelings I carried through adolescence into early adult-hood. My world was turned upside down when my mother took her own life when I was a teenager. For many years I felt that I was alone, that my universe was darker and less defined than my peers, and that it existed somewhat in parallel to conventional reality—that truth and meaning were obscured, perhaps unattainable. It was during this period that my interest in Film Noir, the hard-boiled detective story and the writings of Camus, Sartre and the existentialists became very important to me.
As the blur lifts the subjects from the plane of reality and launches them into an indeterminate ephemeral space, they become meditative objects floating in ether. While the eye continually tries to resolve them, it is unable to do so. I am drawn to the idea that we can believe something is real, while at the same time knowing it is illusory, and the experience of visual confusion, when the psyche is momentarily derailed, can free us to respond emotionally.
Back