Where We Begin

(I Can't Escape This, Reminiscene, 2008, 30x40 inch c-print)

Can we end it right now? Just moments ago you said you were alone. And just after you said that I said you weren’t. We were together on this. Right now, and right here, it was all happening, just before our eyes. The cliff was scary, but it was the only place in the world you can see a sunset like this. We promised each other we’ll never leave and if we had to do, we’d return in exactly one year from this day. It has been three years since and I haven’t seen you since. I wasted $785 dollars on a flight to the Dublin, then the car rental, another $34, and the bed & breakfast, $28, to come here and to wait for entire day, when camping out, waiting for you. You never returned, and your promise to me was lost, it probably fell off the cliff like the rocks I threw over after the first two hours of waiting. Damn it, I thought, it made me feel so empty, but more importantly, it made me feel like a fool. By the time the sun had passed overhead I was feeling better. In a place like this, you can’t help but feel lost, lost in all the good ways of being lost. I don’t think lost is the right word, how about the feeling of having escaped. When we first came here, we really did escape, we were on the run, and this place was the perfect hideout. Of course it has been three years, and the people who were looking for us had probably forgotten of us, or still have pictures of us in the pubs they frequent, and have become so familiar with the wanted posters of us that they no longer see us, just another ad that shouldn’t be up on the walls of their favorite pubs.
The first time I came here for our one year anniversary I wore a disguise; a real thick moustache and thick rimmed glasses. I even had a fake gut over my smaller gut to throw off any resemblance of my bandit self. I even packed my fly-eye plastic aviators and bandana with me, the same aviators and bandanas we used for our Dublin heist. After I was pissed off about you not being there at the cliff, I wondered if you still had the bandana and metal aviators I gave you. I wondered if you had been caught by the Mooney Brothers, and if I was wrong for cursing your absence. Maybe you were even cursing me for not coming to your rescue. I have always thought of you as the person I originally met on the train leaving Paris; a mystery. I never received any means to contact you; you would just be there when you said you would. I liked that, and I think that is why I asked you if you wanted to be my partner in the first place, you were reliable. But then we have this situation with you not being here, right now, I needed you here, so I knew you were safe, that we both were safe, one year, two, and three years after our first job together. I was left with questions, I wanted answers, and I wanted you here.
We planned our first and only heist in a coffee shop, and we were so set and so turned on by the fact we were two normal people turned bank robbers that we couldn’t wait the next few days to rob someone or something, we just had to try out our newly purposed lives out, right then and there. But a coffee shop wasn’t a great place to rob, and we had already been seen without our disguises on, so we decided on the bank across the street. I was a little nervous but not as nervous as excited. And I kind of fell in love with you right then and there because you were down for robbing people. I had never known anyone that would do that with me, or at least, I had never asked. I wanted to believe that there is only one person you are meant to rob people with, and the reason you get caught with any other partner is because they weren’t your soul partner. We were invincible I thought as we were changing into our disguises in the alleyway. We had guns, which were bought two days earlier as souvenirs for your uncle, who asked for nothing else but guns from France. We both were also buzzing from the coffee since we aren’t regulars of the caffeine fixture, which made us even more impatient and excited; impatiently excited. We decided to tie each other’s shoes, pressing down on the strings to make sure they were snug, asking each other if it was too tight or loose, we had it just right like the soul bank robbers we were. I double knotted yours because I doubted myself in my knot tying but I trusted yours. We placed our guns under our sweaters, and I gave you your bandana and wrapped inside was some aviators, and we both tied the bandanas and put the glasses on and with closed fist, we said three, two, one then you kept your hand as fist and I made scissors. I wasn’t sure what that meant but I took the first couple of steps to our future as we walked smoothly out of the alleyway across the street without anyone really seeing us. It was time.
I didn’t feel there, like I was living a life through someone else’s eyes, maybe they were your eyes. Did you have that feeling, it was sort of unreal. That feeling, I’m robbing a bank, like in the movies, but my hand is gripping a piece of steel that could kill someone, I didn’t even know if it was loaded and I checked the safety, guns had those things right? I thought it would be hard to point an potentially loaded gun at someone but when the guard came close to unclipping his hostler I didn’t hesitate, his face was point blank. I yelled beneath my bandana in a Mexican accent, and you looked over, having your gun pointed at a teller, and beneath those huge black eyes I could see your real ones, you were happy we had this going good. Our first should be a good and uncomplicated thing.
We made our demands clear, getting all the larger bills, in two big, but manageable, sacks. You went back with the bank manager and made sure things went well back there. I stayed up front, panning my gun as if I conducted the scene of the crime, one wrong move and I’ll cap you, not in the face, but maybe in the leg if I could aim, or even just close by to scare the crap out of you. I felt dangerous, I was dangerous. And for the first time in my life I was doing something really bad, and it felt great. I thought of all those old people going skydiving, or on an African safari, and I thought how much they are missing out right now, having guns and robbing people, it felt bad and good all at the same time. And I had to just check myself for a second, that I was actually doing this, and how bad this is, but you made me feel like it was the most passionate thing I had ever done in my life. We were forcing ourselves to have to run away from all of this. That we didn’t have a choice, we were on the run, leaving everything behind.
You came back with our sacks of money, you threw mine at me, and I caught it like a baby, being absolutely gentle, all without losing my gun’s position as we made out getaway. Of course, this being an impulsive thing we didn’t think of a getaway vehicle, so we smashed and grabbed the prettiest car outside the bank, a newly restored 1966 MG in a dark green finish and license plate that says Mooney.
We set out on our new lives, as the wind blew through our hair and the air around us was telling us, this was all right. I thought of all the days I spent on the planet living so far from all of this, and how one little change can make everything fit so nicely in place. But the truth is, it wasn’t a small change, it was you, right now, driving at 120 km/h and constantly checking the rear view. You smile at me when you start feeling safe; I wondered if you felt safe with me. I felt safe with you. And the car continued, going passed all the direction signs, leaving civilization, and rolling into endless fields of green hills. I wanted to say, “We are home.” But instead I said, “So this is where we begin.” You look at me, at first contemplative on what I said, then you look serious for a moment, crack a smile, and let out a loud and energetic laugh; half delusion and absolutely wonderful. You were right; there are no words for this feeling right now. Drive.

[End of Part One]

I'm Bad At Goodbyes

(I'm Bad At Goodbyes, Final Words, 2008, 20x24 in c-print)

I'm sick and I need your help telling me this...
Yesterday I got my first disgusting moment with this series when I was photographing the fifth roadkill. I stick my hands right in there and my fingers come pretty close to touching something that has been shouldn't be touched without a 12 ft stick, and I write with clalk what I think could be its final last words.
I have been obsessed with the idea of leaving flowers behind for those we have lost, and though dead rats and pigeons aren't usually missed, or cared for, we see their death more than any other kind of death.

(It Doesn't Hurt Anymore, Final Words, 2008, 20x24 in c-print)

Sometimes I feel pretty sick from seeing some really gross roadkill, and it is so clear in my memory that I could still see it, years later. I thought of changing the context of that image I have in my head by making something humorous about roadkill. And in the process I thought I'd even play on final words, and how they too, can be humorous as well.

(I Learned My Lesson, Final Words, 2008, 20x24 in c-print)

And like the act of leaving flowers behind for those we have lost, I leave these little captions for the little guy, or little guys. Farewell.

Nothing.

(Polaroid Family Tree, 2007-2008)

I don't really have a story for this week, but I'll try to pull something out of somewhere here goes....

Nothing. You know when there is nothing around and you can hear that static noise. It's weird because your ears ring from the silence and it almost hurts. When I was traveling the land on my snail, we encountered many things, such things as wolves, big and scary, to normal; non-fantasy-sized wolves, and then when I thought I saw every creature this land had to offer I see a giant made of boulders. He wasn't very bright, but he was kind, and to spite having a heart made of stone, he had the biggest heart I have ever seen, both literally and emotionally. He was the first one to tell me nothing. He said nothing and nothing was going on, all around, that I should watch out. I asked, for what? He corrected himself with more loud and rocky sounding clearing of the throat and told me, yes, "Nothing". So we said our goodbyes and made out separate pathes, probably bond to see each other later towards the climax.
On the path to nothing you don't really know where you're going but you know you're going the right way when you see everyone and everything running the opposite way, this is how I will learn entirely nothing. I had been given many warnings of my course of direction, and even my snail was feeling unsure of where we were going but he still pushed on without slowing pace, we were looking for nothing. The trees were split, rocks thrown then smashed and I feared we were too close to nothing, but still the snail and I carried on. A young indian boy came to ride beside me, said I was fearless if only I knew what I was going against. I said I wasn't going against anything really, just curiousity, there was nothing else to do. He didn't look to happy but like my snail he continued to the path of nothing. He told me of his land, just beyond the dark scary clouds with the lightning bolts and rain, how it was far different from what it was now, that he never even seen lightning before nothing happened. His people were kind folk, that they were great musicians, and invented the first electric piano synthesizers, and the mohawk originated from there, and leather pants too, they were totally his tribe's gear before the fad. I was rather lost on what he was talking about but he was better entertainment than nothing. So we continued, I minded my stories of my land, couldn't really relate to the young indian boy since my land was probably still standing, having nothing to do with nothing, it was a boring place and so my people called it, Porage. But since you're listening, and I have built all this up about how boring it was, I might as well give you my two cents on the land of Porage. My people were made of clay, brought to life by hands of thunder bolts and lightning, true story since we are a relatively new type of people, only 10, 000 years old, even the rock people are triple that, I can only imagine how old the indian boy's people were, probably the oldest, anyhoot, the other cent was that we believed in nothing, we even questioned our faith in our creation, but still acknowledged it. We just didn't like belief, sure we had assumption of things and the order of the world but we had no way of really knowing if it was true. So it didn't take long for the people neighboring our land to hate us, starting with the troll people, eventual even the giant turtle people, they all semi-hated us, just because we never believed in anything they said. We didn't believe in what we were even saying! And so that is my story of my land and of my people, I left them because I didn't believe in them, and now that I think of it, I'm not even sure if they existed in the first place, there's no going back now because it's probably nothing now.
The young indian boy stopped me when we saw the largest wolf we had ever seen in our whole lives and told me to run. I wasn't getting off my snail and my snail couldn't run, it was fast but it just did whatever snails do, roll-slide-fall-get-up. We just stood there, not caring for this big bad wolf, we had traveled too far and too long for this to end here. The wolf came closer, and then even closer, talking, yes, in human english, and when it spoke, it told us to beware. Of what? Nothing? He laughed then looked deep into our eyes, his eyes in brilliance blood red glow. "You are going to die!" "Silly", and then we started on our way again, and the young indian boy said to the snail and I, "I'll handle him, get out of here while you still can, go, run!" I said goodbye and to even take care, he didn't say anything back, and it felt kinda rude but I didn't really believe in manners anyways. And so we were off again, on the road, to nothing.

The rest of the story consist of a mighty battle between good and nothing, evil and nothing, nothing and nothing, and you can probably imagine how boring, Porage-like, that would all be, but the heroes, or antiheroes in this story don't live, they thought that would make a better story if they didn't. And so, nothing happens in the end of the story, and the moral of it all is...



And the giant rock man never ended up meeting back up with the snail and the man. He died of a heart attack somewhere along the way to the climax.

The End.

Something You've Been Waiting For

(Test from Bloor Cinema, Expansions III, 2008)

Eventually, I'll get around to finishing things. Hopefully these things will be completed before I decide to pull the plug and work on something else. Today I spent 90mins just biking around, most of it at night, looking, or rather, hunting for roadkill. More on this later, I just deleted a whole paragraph giving great detail of my reasons for documenting dead things. Right now I should probably write about the images for this week (I have lived my entire life think that the beginning of the week starts on Monday, I have now switched over to Sunday since my Outlook calendar starts on Sunday). The image above is a test for Expansions III, shot at The Bloor Cinema. Thanks to Victoria D., I was granted time and access to photograph a space in all dimensions. This test served to ground myself even more, and realize again, how hard this is going to be. And I might end up going from 4x5 using a 90mm to a dslr and stitch it all together, then cut it back up to form the shape of a cut-out cube. My only worry about this process is looking too much like Alain Paigment's work, and heartbreaking enough, I found out he also took a space apart and represented in the cut-out cube format. Hince, why I am working on three other bodies of work right now. I decided to choose the theater simply because it is a 3-dimensional space that represents something that is flat.

(A Failed Attempt, 2008)

I'm a Mess

(I Used To Love You, Reminiscene, 2008, 30x40 inch c-print)

Just after all the searching, everything was looking great…what happened? Well I can’t really explain it. Wait, sand on hands expands…or rather, have you ever tried to hold two handfuls of sand with your hands forming a cup, no matter how hard you try that sand will find its way through your hands and fall back to the earth. And so, here I am, in a swamp with all kinds of dangerous things floating, flying, and swimming by me, ready to strike any minute. I have little to say but to form my final words here. I should explain the history of my disposition that I haven’t just created a scenario that will never be explained but it is hard right now to do so, I am in immediate danger as I told you. I would like to thank my mother and father for the creation of myself, and for the talents and good genes to have gotten me this far. I feel sad that I haven’t made a legacy; that my condo in Florida and the 1987 Toyota Camry are all I have to leave for my daughter, who has lived with her mother her whole life and will only truly know her father after his death. I would like to write to her for a moment.
I am sorry. So sorry. I was never there, I know, I cannot tell you this and mean as much with me saying this to what I feel inside. I am nothing without you. And I am sorry. To hear all of this on my tape recorder I bring with me everywhere, something I should’ve done with you, I am glad that you will hear my last words.
When you were born I was not allowed to be there, nor visit, you were given a name that was not my decision, and you went to a school I didn’t decide on. And it was my fault. When your mother finally replied to my endless letters she sent me a Polaroid of you in hopes it would shut me up, it did the opposite of her desires as I started sending triple the amount, like an obsessed fan. I was your greatest fan, Claudine. And soon your mother had moved you somewhere else, somewhere without my permission or say so, and didn’t tell me. And I didn’t realize this until all my letters posted on the week of August 14th to 21th in 1991 returned to sender, me in this case. I didn’t know what to do, and so I went searching for you. I moved to Florida when the private detective told me you now lived there with your mother, Roxanne. She knew I hated Florida, how I didn’t like the elderly that much, and hated Disneyland. But I moved to be closer to you. And soon the private detective was discovered by your mother; maybe she hired a hitman to whack him. I hadn’t heard from him in weeks and then one day in the mailbox I received a box. Inside the box was an entire hand with exception the middle finger was missing. I stopped my search immediately for a long time. And I hid the hand in my neighbor’s yard (Bill, if you ever hear this, I am too, very sorry, it was four years ago before I knew you and if you’re curious to see the remains of the hand, behind the tulips underneath the gnome, dig for two feet).
Then after the search for you was lying dormant for three years I decided to come find you again. I didn’t care of the fears of death or having my hand cut off because at that point I forgotten the reality of the fear of those things. I just wanted to find you. And so I hired another private detective and told him to be extra careful since we were both on the line. He and I both bought guns and didn’t sleep much for days. Surprisingly it didn’t take long, just three and half days to find your location. The only thing the private detective wasn’t able to actually come close to the whereabouts, just locate them. And so I was left with just a location and little less. I thanked him very much for his bravery and his trade, and I should probably thank him here since he put his life on the line. Thanks Lucas.
When I search on map of the location I discovered why Lucas could not have possibly have made it to your location, you were located in an old castle in the middle of a swamp. A swamp in the Everglades that was notorious for alligator attacks and poisonous snakes, not to mention swarms of virus-bearing mosquitoes. And after I make it passed the swamp I still had a hitman or two, maybe even guards in black suits wearing black aviators waiting for me to come out of the waters. But I didn’t care anymore, I had watched the end of Apocalypse Now 30 times by now and even had the war paint painted on my face, you were the only thing I cared and lived for, my only purpose was to reach you.
I made it a few miles until I ran into alligators and realized I wasn’t Captain Benjamin L. Willard, nor Martin Sheen, I was me, Jerry Civilian, a nobody weighing 150lbs and standing 5’9’’ against 400-600lbs killing machine, a beautiful and misunderstood, killing machine. And at first clear sight of an alligator from 8ft away my heart raced, my left arm when numb, and I struggled to breathe feeling lightheaded and lost. I cursed all those happy meals my mother fed me as a child, I cursed all those adult-size “happy” meals I bought myself when I was too big for a child-size one, and then I just cursed at everything in general. I just wanted you to know that I will and always have loved…

And the lights fade, and the last thing I can hear is the sound of my body hitting the water then the water filling my ears and how sounds traveling through water are rather relieving.


Now for the non-story related talk on a blog about ma photography...I'll try to make this portion worth your time.
First, the image, it's a reshoot of the same installation, done at a different time and composition, and express the mood and atmosphere better. The title is of a short story I wrote going off of the words, I Used To Love You. The reason why I didn't decide to include that short story to the image inspired from the story and memory, well I tend to be very absurb and arbitrary, like my writing.
And secondly, the fact of the week:
Apocalypse Now took 200 hours of footage to film over the course of 16 months, and was originally supposed to be film as a faux documentary taking place in the actual Vietnam War, which is the plot to the recent war (comedy) movie, Tropic Thunder. Martin Sheen had a heart attack during the filming of Apocalypse Now and Sam Bottoms was on drugs during his performance as hippie-gone-soldier and surf legend, Lance B. Johnson, who was also on drugs as well, method actor? It took Francis Ford Coppola three years to edit after several close calls with suicide, and is probably the greatest war film ever made to this author.

Nomirrors, CO

In a small town that meets the giant of rock and snow peaks a legend goes that the town has never once had a mirror. The occupants of the town felt there was no need, in fact, they probably never heard of a mirror. For the people of this town were from the forest, have always lived there until they discovered the gold in the mountain. With no care for the gold itself, they found the gold created a friendship made by the neighboring towns when they made their monthly trades, the town carried on just as before before the gold. Nomirrors with its lack of mirrors or culture of reflections, had to trust each other, to speak to each other and gauge a man or a woman by how their face looked upon telling them of their day, or how their livestock was coming along, to tell how they appeared that day. The weather was always of two conditions, sunny or rainy, and talk of the weather was a very popular subject amongst the people of Nomirrors.
Friends were the best, and the forest was an important part of everyone’s life here. During the gold rush the town went through its biggest struggle, keeping the forest alive. For all of the gold would never bring the forest back in their town. The fires to treat the gold, and the support beams for the caves took more than the forest had in mind for the people of Nomirrors, and as a result the forest choose to stay clear of the town. The uncut trees decided to uplift themselves approximitely one mile away from the farthest house. Those who have built new houses on the outskirts of town would wake the next day after their move and discover the forest had moved at night. The mystery of the walking trees has never been solved even to this modern day. And since this incidence the people of Nomirrors no longer mine the gold, and have planted new trees, which have become quite fond of its human caretakers. It has been some time since then, and the old forest still remains quite as far, but the new trees have reached up to the old ones and they seem to be kind to each other.
The wind sings a different song in Nomirrors, it is said if you listen hard enough you can hear the voices of all the people who are yelling right this instant all over the world. With each tree the voice is amplified and channeled, with a large enough section of forest you can hear sometimes a thousand voices at once, all yelling. Some of the voices are calling for their lost children, some cry for help, others say their last words, and then the wind dies and gets tired and cold. We will never know for sure why the wind carries these voices, some of which have been reported to be in foreign languages, ranging from German to Japanese.
Nomirrors has many wonderful qualities but its people are the greatest of all, with their means of communication. The town’s elderly never speak, but yet the younger inhabitants can perfectly understand them just from their facial expressions. They say the reason for this is because from all of their experiences they have learned how to read the face so well they feel humble not to speak anymore. Some find speaking a waste of time, and others find it to be something that we should never have to learn, that we lose something when we speak when the face can tell you with more clarity and truth. “We can’t lie with our faces “,writes on my notepad Anne Mooney, at 96, and looking as young as she did twenty years ago. She writes, “We, elderly of Nomirrors, don’t get all wrinkly since we stop talking years ago, our words leave us and all of the regrets and mistakes leave as well, we have no history but the town’s, we live amongst the trees, the trees!”.
My visit to Nomirrors has been one of the greatest experience of my life, and though I am unable to start keeping my silence like the elderly of the town, I feel one day I want to stop speaking, and have only my face to express how I feel. The town has since been lost from the map, and the mountainous road leading to the town has been lost as well, perhaps covered from a landslide and now appears as an ever-growing forest. I hope to discover my way back to this place one day.
The world can be discovered in the smallest of towns, and could be found without even leaving home. Can you hear it; it is the voice of the whole world, yelling in the wind.

Did you think I was going to forget the fact of the week...well, I did. Here it is, moments after posting the first post of the week:
As some of you may know, the big bang is only one side of the story to the expanding Universe, in theory, eventually it will met the end of its cosmic stretch and start to reverse. And like the fates of many red giant stars (how many I have no idea, its a pretty big Universe, with two hands parting as wide as they can to express about 93 billion light years) they grow so large that they start collapsing under their own gravity, forming neutron stars, with all the volume compressed into a few miles, and some even turn into black holes...so I guess with all these facts I wanted to say, the Universe eventual, in theory, reaches the end of its journey and starts coming back in on its self until we have the big crunch. Remember at the end of MIB (Men In Bigwillystyle or Black if you want to be boring), when the Universe is in the marble (sorry to ruin a rather important plot to those who haven't seen the movie), well that can very much happen! And that's the fact of the week!

Eulogy

(God's Lonely Man, Reminiscene, 2008)

If you hold my hand we’ll make it there even faster, it will be the thrill of being together on something just before we get old. I wanted to last forever, see the mountains turn to hills, and then see the hills turn to sand dunes, but not anymore. You were on your death bed and I wanted to be dying right beside you. I cursed my good health; my strong and young body, and then I started cursing your illness, your weak and aging body and realized I had no right nor will to do anything about it. You were leaving me, but we were still together. I had no control over what was happening and I’ll just watch you fade away like a time-lapse of rivers eroding the land into canyons. I wanted to say a million words but said nothing.

(I Used To Love You, [literally II], 2008)

All of sudden my heart kicked, my eyes opened, and I felt very much alive, and then I looked at you and you were, very much alive as well! Your eyes were now open, curious and dumb-founded to this new feeling of life within yourself, and you just jumped out of bed. You grabbed my hand, we looked at each other, almost drooling at the month with a fever for adventure, and we flew out of that hospital room. We ran down the hallway, each room was open and there were people coming back to life with the same rigorous energy as us, we were just ten steps ahead of them. Security went ape-shit with us and the rest, but saw us first. They had strait jackets and needles, some even had batons. It didn’t matter how big and strong they were, and as we dodged them with awesome speed like amazing counter backs of divine, we made our way through and onwards to the stairway. I felt sorry for the security guards, thought of them as just doing their jobs and now they might get yelled at for letting us go, but they tried, and we succeeded, that’s how it was.
Down the stairway in a flash, we were at the ground floor; there were cops now, with guns loaded with tranquilizer s and zappers (tasers) in every hand they had available. I couldn’t count the number, but there might have been a whole squared there, just for us! For one second there, just for one little second I thought we weren’t going to make it through, that this was the end and you’d have to die back there, in a death bed, and alone now, but then you grabbed my hand even harder and ran even faster making me run to catch up. We were going dead on to them, like mad wild rhinos rushing to their opponents with no care for them or if they crash, it was do or die at this point, and we had something to live for. I closed my eyes just before contact with the squared of cops, and started thinking of the pain from the tranquilizer bullets and the zappers, but I didn’t feel any pain, my feet felt light, my clothes felt gone, and the only thing my body felt was your hand. We were flying, and I didn’t want to open my eyes again, it just felt so good, like a dream that you never want to wake up from. But then I heard the sound of sirens and people yelling from a distance and I opened my eyes. We were sixty, maybe seventy feet from the ground, and everyone who wanted to stop us, that wanted you to die in that hospital were slowly turning into ants, we were now probably ninety feet above and I could see their faces, they all looked sad for a moment, like they wanted to come with us. And then more patients came flying out of the hospital, now they were rising above the rest, leaving behind their loved ones. Where were we going?

(Why Can't You Forget It., [literally II], 2008)

Laugh!-then-sigh...

(4x5 Polaroid of God's Lonely Man, from Reminiscene, 2008)

This is rough...

I have to hold on to these things.

I remember I was sitting down at my typewriter, writing a story about a man who was so lonely that he almost disappeared. And maybe that man did disappear and all that is left of him is his last words.

I have to try hard to remember the best parts of my life because I tend to only remember the bad parts. Walking around and revisiting places I recall memories that are associated with those places. Each location has its own time and place that is best remembered. Some of those places I can only remember bad moments of my life and I am forced to see that place and see that memory every time I pass by.

The statements used in this series are taken from my own words from various times in my life. Each statement reflects on a memory within the space they are installed in.

I tend to remember the bad like most people, I have to try harder to remember the good. And as this series develops these good moments are revisited, so that I can see them again, and I can feel them once more. Maybe I can remember them forever. Like flowers to a place where your friend lost his or her life; that curb, that side of the highway, or courtyard in a safe neighborhood where bad things don’t normally happen, we want to leave mementos behind show we will always remember. These words will remain behind at these places, and even when someone scratches them away, they’ll live forever in my photography.

*note at the bottom of each post now includes a label, these can be used to gathered and navigate various posts on the same subject, in this case, any work for [literally] can be grouped together in a lovely package that makes, ...and this is what I originally set out to do with this series but ended up doing this, more sensible in getting the complete thought. No more of that searching or that, I'm too lazy or care not to look into this, it's late and I have rapid eye motive to do.
...And so the fact of the week is, on average we dream for only two hours a night, a total of 6 years of dreaming, (that's like watching Planet Earth 4,781.352 times!), in the average human life expectancy (and yes, I will also give that fact as well, 80+ for Canada of Free Health Care, 77.5-80 US of America).

Slippers From Hawaii

(test shot from the continuation of [Literally], 2008)

My mug, my favorite mug with the slippers on it and HAWAII in a fun font, the mug from my mother, would look really interesting if it just randomly exploded right now. There will be no trace of what force within the mug made it explode, it would just burst into a million, maybe a million and a half, pieces. There is water inside so that will just leak all over the place, including the very keyboard I’m typing on. Hopefully I’ll have my glasses on because I’m sure there would be about ¼ of that million and half pieces in my eyes. And if that happened, then I don’t think I’d be very amused that my mug just spontaneously combusted on my desk, then in my eyes.
I want something completely random and beautiful to happen. Whether it is in the form of an exploding mug from Hawaii or just a stranger falling on the street, right before me, and looking up scared and lost, I reach my hand down and they suddenly grab mine back and we start running, we leave our things behind, like bags and books held under armpits, and we just run like fuck.

...

I should probably talk about the photograph above. For half a year I have been developing the concept behind [Literally]. This project was first done with recycled images, pulled out of focus in the darkroom, and using a large clear piece of plastic I inserted text on to the surface. I then placed the plastic over my photographic paper in the dark and exposured the image. The results were these new and appropriated images with a new context. Each one varied and the series progressed into an emotional depth as the text started from straight-forward definitions to poetric descriptions.
The continuation of this series is installation base, working more on the lines of graffiti than appropriating images. Using the same plastic stickers to create font, I will place them on windows to reflect a memory I have of that place and view.

*I decided not to post my response to Sophie Calle and Gregory Shephard's Double-Blind, after all. Let's just say I really enjoyed it, so much that I wrote a personal story that reflects on the subject.

I Blame Hollywood for My Expectations of Romance

(Photograph of a Viewing of Sophie Calle & Greg Shepard's Double-Blind (No Sex Last Night) 1992, 2008)

…Maybe even literature, though I have read some sad and lovely stories of love from Leonard Cohen, some of which I relate to from my own history, and some of which I have no experience of but fall deeply in love with the words.
I’m not really sure where I stand, mostly confused, maybe even scared. The truth is I don’t really know and it is this uncertainty that separates me from anyone else, and separates the emotions I have to give. I don’t think I have ever met someone I loved and that loved me back, and so can be said for those who have loved me that I never loved. I can’t help it, neither could they. There is no ownership to love because it can never be transferred or traded away, you’re just stuck with it. We tend to label ownership to things of value. Love doesn’t have a value when you’re the only one feeling that, it’s a beautiful burden. It’s hard to live with a heavy thing, and we regret, hate, having to bare with it, but life in the cold, where we live on the dark side of the moon without the light of love, we regret not having love. And it is where I find myself mostly, sucking up the last of it, those fruits of burden, or at this point, the distasteful wine from decomposition. At times I feel like Dr. Frankenstein, taking parts of dead moments and reassembling them together to form something that is very much the opposite of its materials, something alive. And though it may be a beast, it is love, not from the process of bringing something alive again, but by putting life into something. And that’s where I’m at, this conception of love; you take a dying or dead plant and you transplant it to a new pot, with new soil, you water it, and you keep watering it even if it shows no signs of life, then your devotion is rewarded when his back straightens up, he begins to stand on its own, starts blooming, maybe it is a she, and then she grows and grows and you just look from a few feet away and admire what you have done. It isn’t what you have done but what should have happened. That nature should rebuild itself, that we should not have to aid it, but having such illusions of this act, like the feeling we created Dr. Frankenstein’s love, when we didn’t, we just think we did, like traveling to a destination. We will go somewhere with thoughts of getting somewhere, but inside we just wanted to experience traveling, that it was the journey that we were looking for, a journey that is generated by chance. And then when we arrive what do we discover, we’re living exactly how we were before we left, in a static state where we have a home again; a place for our shoes to rest, a place for our skin to bathe, and a place for our things to stay while we grow old and tired and then retire to our beds. I think of Hollywood, how we are just like it, full of ideas and conceptions of what love is. It is what we build, what we create, and what we willed together, with all of our strength and all of our heart. The plant, whether he or she, will still grow without us. The dead flesh will decompose and become life again. And everything will end, happy or not, without rolling credits, and without us. But I want to believe, that I can control something by being a part of it, and will I be controlled? It is better this way…because some things don’t change, and so she or he will grow, stronger and stronger, while I grow weaker and weaker, more and more, and less and less, in love, and without, and again, and again.

(Title name inspired by an interview from Charlie Kaufman talking about Hollywood, paraphrased.)

Expansions III (Banana)

The image of a banana replaced the light bulb floating over my head this time.

Expansions III (Banana) picks up where Expansions II left off, expanding the scene through multiple images, giving the viewer a broader sense of time and place, as well as creating intimacy with portions of a scene. Banana is a focus on my current practice, reinventing the presentation of photography. Since Expansions is about dimensional distortion, as well as capturing meaningful portions of a scene to create a narrative, it would only be suitable to produce an installation that reflects this idea.

The idea of a banana occurred to me one night when I was thinking of representing a space. I wanted to document a room by photographing each wall, then floor, and ceiling to capture the atmosphere of this room as well as document all aspects of space. This was the original approach for Expansions I, where I did 360 panoramas of an interior spaces. The name, Banana, comes from the process of peeling a banana.

The banana is dissected section by section to fully exposure the soft fruit inside. Expansions III is doing exactly that, taking each portion of a space and dissecting it section by section. The soft fruit is replaced with the act of documenting what surrounds a space to represent the space itself; like the shell of a banana being reassembled to appear unpeeled. And like the banana, and anything that is photographed, it first started as a three dimensional object.

A Reason for A Reason

(For What Remains... (When We Are Shadows), 2006)

What can be said for all this to happen…for a future to be born from just the chance of two strangers. I long to discovery a world that is free and without a past. A future without a plan, and without a history. Can we just forget it all before now? I itch for a moment, just that right moment that is filling up with the waters of chance, just about to explode and there we are, a static that fills the air.
I talk of experience, of moments passed, for each person I meet there is another story to be added to a larger story. At times I feel overwhelmed with responsibility to these people, that their friction with my life must be recorded. And little by little they are made permanent in my collection of experience. But I want us to be born again without a history. That there aren’t truths to discover from our past, that we left it behind like all the failures and regrets, a giant pile of rocks and rolled grass, even deer and small animals will be rolled up in this Katamari ball of the things that fall pass our shadows.
We’ll live our days with a motto like, “The More You Know The More You’ll Have To Leave Behind”. We’ll travel the world on motorcycles with our leather jackets and our matching leather gloves. We’ll look as fierce as friendly, surprising kids in backseats by turning a serious road face into a valley full of smiles; we’ll wave as we pass and they will put down their gameboys and tell their parent they want to ride motorcycles with us. Of course their parents will never let them, but when the sun sets and their parents are clocking those extra hours of driving those kids will dream of riding through the country in our newly added sidecars. There will be goggles. There will be adventures to be forged, and there will be new entries in our lives, all of our lives, together, shared on the road.
I couldn’t think of any of way to better put a proposal for escape. And so I rest by my cycle, waiting for the right partner to join me. Thump out on the side of the road, the bike still kicks, I just wait. Deep down inside I wonder if you can hear me now, the voice scratchy from the many days of absence of words. Can you hear me calling, singing with the road, a symphony with the idea of escape. The road turns orange-black as the sun kisses the peaks of trees beyond my stop, I can see the stars begin to wake, and the wind blows a humble sense over me. The reason blows right pass me, never stopping, as it continues with or without you.

*[in smaller text] I have a hard time telling people that I wrote something for them, that they were a source of inspiration, some get frightened by the level of intimacy I can imagine in my fiction, but my words and my affections for those in my life are mine to keep. I write for you.

Singing in Unison

(Untitled from The Great Escape, 2008)

I keep telling myself to cherish this moment, to breathe it all in, and not loss one moment of it. But I can’t, and I cough from the lack of fresh air. I can’t hold my breath for very long these days, maybe ninety seconds. I remember when I was full of strength, pulling two minutes without trying, diving deep into the pool and letting out all the air in my lungs that made my body once buoyant. I was a rock on the sea floor. The fish would swim right by, waving these tails in their quick goodbyes.
You were here with me, an entire day, and a late night when the sun went down. Outside your window there was a monster in the shadows, with long narrow fingers, millions maybe, all dancing in unison. I looked away for a second and returned to your attention, we were safe again.
I just sat there wondering how long this night will last, it was too much fun, like being in a submarine. Underwater we didn’t have any humans to judge our fun, to hear them tell us why we should be their friends, to have them join our fun. No…they weren’t allowed to even dive into the waters that surround our vessel. The hatches were sealed tight, for the water and for the potential underwater pirates. We had this moment to ourselves, and what did we do, we just laughed until our bellies hurt, our eyes were wet, and our minds were forgetful. Thank God our submarine got YouTube.
We dove deeper and deeper, learning the secrets of the life beneath the sea, where mermaids and seamen hide when they fear the company of those who walk the Earth, and we were alone…to continue, continuing, and to vanish.


The image above is the beginning of the newest development of Expansions, this being II.V, or 2.5, expect further information on this new development on later post.
Trivia: Expansions III is nicknamed "Banana".

We're Splitting Up

(View from the End, 2008)

Something poetic should be said: Something proper, fitting, and right, for closure, for our goodbyes. But we don’t, and we'll never, it just begins when it ends. Stop calling me. Stop emailing me. You don’t even live there anymore. Why can’t you just forget it. Why can’t we forget it. I’ll try and forget you. I want to. The image of you has been split, you image is no longer with my image, we are two not one, and I’m throwing you away. I’m doing this because I once loved you, because there are emotions that need to be forgotten. There is a charge that needs to be dumped.
I’m going to be a runaway. I’m going to grow a beard now. I’m going to read more, be completely, totally, dedicated to my work. I’ll work harder, I’ll do, not try, I will. All without you, I don’t need you. I can never escape the part of me that was you, and you can never escape the part of me that is you. But please forget, I’ll stay up late at night, doing, not trying. And then when I can’t think of you anymore I’ll see you again. Right there and then, somewhere in the future, your image with the image of me, together as one, and we won’t be able to split. But I’ll try. We’ll try. But we will never do.

Climbing the Hill

Remember that place when we were kids, where we found pond of tadpoles and try to catch them. They were fast, too fast even for the fastest of kids. We had our pants rolled up but they still got wet and my mom wondered where we were. We lied, not to lie, but to keep it a secret; our little pond of tadpoles.
Now when I think of that pond, I can imagine being fast enough to catch the tadpoles, but they are no longer tadpoles now, they have grown, transformed, and are adults now. Frogs don’t swim fast enough; they hop on the ground, having little memory of what life is like in the water. There is no challenge in catching frogs, but I catch one anyways. He doesn’t pee in my hands like my 3rd grade teacher told me, he just sits there waiting, calmly and carelessly. What fear must I strike in his frog-size heart, such fear to freeze a great forest frog in the winter only to thaw out in spring, alive again, hopping again? Here in my hands he just looks over this gigantic cliff above his world, seeing the tadpoles swim, seeing his kids grow, grow until they’re frogs too, up here the view is amazing, he is calm and careless, he sees beyond the pond, beyond the grass, and no longer dreams of the outside, his eyes are seeing a life beyond the pond.

Remembering Names

(Untitled 12, Greg and Lake Ontario)

At first moments, when your hand is firmly gripping the hand of a once-stranger in that brief moment they tell you their name is where I usually get lost. I’ll introduce myself and I’ll try to pronounce my name clear enough so that it is remembered, but I expect you to forget. That is where we are, unsure of our names, and in a way we remain strangers. I like that.

I consider these images apart of “summer”, even after I stated the summer portion of this series was completed with 10, make that, 12 triptychs. To me, like the image from earlier this week, is my last moment of summer. And like every summer, there is one image that represents the summer in a form of closure, like the epilogue to a film or book, that reinsuring summary of the ideas and morals behind a story. This story is summer, and like memory, we tend to remember how something starts but always remember how something ends, the in-between fades over time.

(Untitled 13, Darren and Hanslan's Point)

Farewell.

Up next week:

Mystery meat, potentially polaroids, and resurfacing relics. Until then, enjoi the last of what you still call summer, because summer is a state of mind not just a season.

Finger Print on the Lens

(Farewell, 2008)

Dissecting a portion off, the meat rips from the bones, the bones shower the garbage can, and the waste is quickly disposed of soon after the cooking is done. The bread is grated and the oil is forming small bubbles gathering to burst. The kitchen fills with smells of a labor for hungry stomachs as a master of his own serves chicken, battered in bread chumps and spices, cooked just right, never to hard, always rightfully cooked.
Once the meal has been eaten the cook returns to the kitchen and cleans. In the sink over rushing water he notices a cut on his middle finger, the wound’s opening is folded over underneath the tap, the blood stops, and something happens. Inside this cook, inside his head, and deeper inside of his brain, a rush of activity rushes the networks of neurons; a small city of lights in a bird's eye view in the night sky.
The memory of a great tower being built appears from the depth of his childhood. How great this tower will be, it will take a million men to complete, some will lose their lives, their children left with widows, and the young boy destine to be a modest cook feels in his heart he will never see this tower completed in his lifetime. He thinks of his children seeing what he sees, a mighty tower, even mightier as when he was their age. The environment around them is different now, it’s the future, cars no longer use roads, they fly in the air. Everything is grey, concrete raises beside this mighty tower but stop to be taken by its shadow, swallowing all height as it rules the skies with the sun.
The memory of its beginnings are lost in the future, with its creators now gone, as a new generation builds skywards; this tower has no memory of its own. As the father to these children grows older his memory fades, his might as a modest cook withers to arthritis, and the man transforms into an old man. He looks up to the tower walking with his grand children as they watch ants in the sky dance with the sun. The man looks back down and sees another generation living underneath this mighty tower, he sees himself, these little eyes, glassy sky blue and shimmering earth brown, they see a tower with no memory, only they’re memory of it.

Most rememberable short stories I read this summer:
After I Was Thrown in the River and Before I Drowned by Dave Eggers (from How We Are Hungry)
The Tower by Steven Millhauser (from McSweeney's 25th)
Notes for a Story of a Man Who Will Not Die Alone by Dave Eggers (also from How We Are Hungry)

Again! (repeat 3x times)

Expansions II (The Great Escape) has turned into my largest series, currently at 10 sets of triptychs, and expanding over the course of four seasons. I feel at this point, spring and summer have been covered, and fall and winter, will be a change in direction from the first half of the series. I find that the drop in temperature dramatically changes mood, and thought, and for a series about escape and the idea of escape, it would have to be dramatically different from the idea of escape during the warmer seasons. The second half of the series will be more diverse then it is currently, as well as complex, staging different temperaments within the characters as they struggle to find peace around them.
These images are the newest to the series, and as for now, the last of the summer set. They are closer to the look I wanted, since as I have been shooting, my technique for this series has been developing along with the concept. My current technique is closer to my original technique developed for Expansions I, where I would make full 360 set of parallel images, making a set of images blend into each almost seamlessly.

You Don’t Know Me

(We're Lost, NO! We're NOT Lost! I'm Sorry, 2008)

“I have traveled a long way to get this to you”, said an exhausted voice beyond my shoulder, maybe behind some rocks. I have been traveling a long time, perhaps I was followed, and so I reached over my shoulder to those suspicious rocks. This is how I met my inspiration. “You kept traveling”, he said, “without noticing me, and then I just had to yell at you, come here, boy!” And so I stopped but it was just my imagination, I kept lying to myself as I continued to walk. Was there something… no, that’s silly, no one travels on these roads, no one since that thing with the bear. And while all this internal noise was going on I neglected the rather old man, dressed like Moses, waving at me with, yes, a cane, A CANE! Anyhoot, that’s the story of how I come up with these ideas of mine, I just take a walk on the limestone road and keep walking until old man inspiration comes yelling, with his cane. “BOY!”

I thought this would be a great way to open this entry. A random story for a small collection of random images.

(The Heat on August 20th, 2008)

I’m very interested in the way people escape the cage of their surroundings, for me, it’s imagining I’m not here in small patches of nature, and for others, like the lady across from me, it’s relaxing on her lawn chair on top of a building amongst the pigeons.

Double Negative

(Meredith On Her Birthday, 2008)

Lately I’ve been obsessing over the idea of the stranger. Not knowing someone but being fascinated by them to the point you want to know them. But as soon as you are introduced and you start learning who they are, they are no longer a stranger. I want to preserve some quality of someone as a stranger, only know them at a distance, though we will talk at a causal level, our conversations will never grow any depth. Or maybe there will be depth without any context of where they’re coming from, just pieces to a puzzle that can never be complete, with missing pieces that will never surface.
I discovered that there is only one reality that the stranger can be known at the same time as left unknown, in fiction. And so I’ll just live in my words to believe there can be a possibility of the perfect stranger.

Recycle

(I Don't Feel Like Waking Up This Morning, 2007)

Living in a moment, just not the original.

A photograph is imprint of the past and serves as capsule to our memories. Creating the narrative photograph, whereas the reality of the subject is fabricated, serves to the exact idea of the photograph. When we see an image, that image is no longer in the same context of the moment it is representing, since we weren’t at the time and place of the photograph, and there is no experience of living that moment until your eyes came across the photograph of that moment. We tend to find an understanding of the context since we are only supplied with whatever details the author has given us, and the image itself. Everything else is up to what we can imagine the context to be. Maybe the image tells us of an event we had heard of, and that we are now seeing it from a different perspective, but still the context is not exact, and we are curious to know what face of reality the author has seen. Is the reality not in front of us, with the modesty of the unaltered image? The narrative was born from this relationship that we have with the photograph, having trust in the photograph’s integrity has led us to fabricate our own realities.
And even with my photographs where I have a clear understanding of the original context of the time and space represented, I am no longer the person who took the photograph on that day, I have experienced many moments since then and I been altered myself. When I see my photographs I see my past, but I also see my future, fabricating events that have not happen, perhaps will never happen, and bring myself back to these moments as if living them. But I am not reliving these memories, I am creating new memories with them as create my own narrative with new photographs.

The New Toy-o

How to justify buying a new camera…

I own too many cameras, and I only use two of them. I avoid any gear talk on here but it has been a subject I’ve had roaming around in my head for the past few days. I would like to talk about a feeling rather than a purchase here. A feeling I get whenever I do finally come to the conclusion, Hey I want a new camera. Just two days ago, after almost a whole year of use, I put down my Crown Graflex, my baby (yes, I call, once in a great while, certain cameras that) and my dream camera since I could remember, for another. Besides from a mod-ed Polaroid Pathfinder, the Graflex(es, s) are the smallest large formats you can get, and they are light weight and can be taken anywhere. I tend to travel light, and so when I first got my Graflex (whom I call Grand Master Graflex) it didn’t take too long for it to replace my medium format camera. For all the right reasons it took the most important parts from medium format I found useful and concentrated them into an even slower process of taking a photograph. I found when I slowed myself down as much as possible, I could mediate on the subject at hand and focus deeper into it. I have to always have a tripod for large format, and carefully go through an entire list of sequences for each photograph (meter, open aperture, open shutter, direct subject, pull focus, close shutter, adjust aperture, cock shutter, direct subject again, load film back, remove dark slide, release shutter, and if using a 6x12 film back, advance film, repeat) each time I go shooting. But to spite the occasional mess-up (which I will always know I did instantly after the fact), the images have been highly detailed and highly worth it. Today I shoot with a Toyo-Field 45A, which slows me down just that much more and open rise (and swing) to my photographic scope. So the gear isn’t just for collection or show, it is a planned out investment and a step further into my progress, with each addition making it finer-tuned to the image I envisioned.

(images above; first images from Toyo: Jacquie in Grange, Parking Lot View)

The Progress

This morning (afternoon) I woke up to a message, demanding new work for my blog. The images I selected for this week’s entry aren’t new and from the progress of my style and technique, are rather dated in my eyes. But to spite the age, these images are important to me and touch down on something I haven’t done in a long time in my work, focus on a memory rather than concept. It has been almost an entire year since the last time I have done documentary photography rather than conceptual photography that evolves around documentary. The progress has been, well, progressive, I have been conceptualizing three new series and further developing The Great Escape, which will be “expanding” into fall and winter, exploring different people in different spaces. In fact, I’m looking for new subjects, does anyone know twins ranging from 8 to 13 years of age?
With another year of school, I sit on the wake of a new wave of style and technique that make my current work a reflection the same way these images above (and below) feel to me now. (the images starting from top to bottom: Untitled from Maui, Photo Tech Dave with Morning Coffee, My Last Pair of Shoes and My Last Day Here, and Look What We've Done!)

What's next: Well I am continuing [Literally], shooting the rest of The Great Escape in fall and winter, starting a new series that explores memories we tend to want to forget, Expansions III, the Installation of We Have A History (at Xpace), dipping my toes into architectual photography with what might be my last film camera I'll buy, and last but not least, I want to get a Nuit Blanche show going for OCAD photo. More on all this soon, and I will have some new images soon...until the next, take care and keep the art going.

Yet Again...

Yes, yet again. So finally, NOW and EYE Weekly have announced the official date for the opening of this show, August 6th from 7 - 10pm at the Central you can come see Alex Kisilevich and my work. The body of work I'll displaying is my last completed series using single images, as well as shot 6x6cm. Here's a link to Alex's work, http://alexkisilevich.com/home.html, its worth the time. Hope to see you all at the opening.

An Extensive Nature

In more detail.

What is an escape when physically there is no change, when the seeker of escape stays geologically the same? The idea is born from this desire of change. When thoughts are strong and bare enough weight that they become reality itself. I ask what is reality but an idea of what is real. For The Great Escape it is a matter of an idea of peace within the city, a place I spend most of my time in and find it hard to escape, physically due to what keeps me here in the first place. By taking these small portions of nature within the city I am able to recreate sense of fuller nature. By the use of what I call, Expansions, the distortion of dimensional proportions, I am able to take a small amount of nature and expand it to a full landscape. At the same time this technique creates a perceptive where the viewer dissects each portion of the image individually, as if a standalone, but when viewed from farther away the dissection of the three images fade away making one large image.
With all the conveniences of modern living from technology and the cloud of consumer culture, there will always be an escape from it all because you can never escape nature.

new.kids.on.the.block

I have noticed recently that my Polaroid Family Tree, which is continuously growing, is almost, if not all, emerging artists. Years ago I started this pseudo-series called Artist Profiles, which were portraits I would take of creators of art in various forms, each portrait being artistically different for the other. Today I find myself all over the map, and the only medium of photography that is used in a singular purpose, over and over, are my polaroids, they are only used to document the people that spend time at my apartment, who are largely artists. I can only imagine the contrast that time will produce when these inhabitants of the Polaroid Family Tree look back at their polaroids years down the road and remember they're lives in 2008.

Now the news,
Two things: The Central Cafe show is postponed till early August, thing numbero duo, I am currently curating a show for Xpace and I am looking for one or two more artists to fit the theme of History and Relationship (I know, that sounds vague, but the curatoral statement is being adapted for a larger number of artists).

2008 [january] - 2008 [july]

I never thought I'd see my concept book go so fast but it's all filled up with ideas, a good amount of them shot, worked on, and saved for the future. This book has been with me everywhere, has seen parties, gallery openings, it's always by my side when an idea is born. And every conceptual photograph I have taken since January was first cultivated here. This book feels somewhat like my journal, a collection of my thoughts, and has this pressing of memories when I see the ideas I immediately think of the photographs and the memory of working on them. Each of these images reminds me of my steps I took to get where I am now, and the overall images of this book shows me my progress and development, ultimately, as an artist.
Dissection Of... (early test)
How Can You Disappear When I Disappear With You

2 Cents

Photography has been a bit slow lately, I've been writing a series of short stories. And that can only mean posting images that didn't make the cut, but are standalones. The top image is from my final roll, the same roll Mask Without Mask came from, for a project I was working on for an expressive self-portrait. The bottom image is from How Can You Disappear When I Disappear With You, and was supposed to be the final image for the series. The use of multiple colors leading up to a pure white symbolizes each person's influence in my life, like the use of green for Chris, or Red for Aleks, and Yellow for Meredith, all those colors combine form white light. And like the prism, we never see what makes white light until we slow things down and dissect the white to see the full specrum.

The series of short stories has a name, A Series of Attempts (At My Life), and if you know me, it's ironic and humorous, saying these are stories that are influenced by my real life, but are fabrications of my far-fetched imagination. They are attempts because like all the things I imagine, I kind of want them to be true just to see it with my eyes, curious in a Godly way, but they most likely will never happen (probably for the best).

Maybe I'll post images of the originals on here, that way they're still images that are accompanied with my artist statements.