While moving studios years ago, some experiments with ink on film were filed, then forgotten in the shuffle. In February 2020 I found them in an envelope and, curious to see them for the first time, sent them to be scanned. I got them back one day after NYC schools closed for pandemic safety, as alarming numbers of sick and dying were rolling in.
I have continued working with these surreal landscapes ever since. Part of my fascination with this project has been with the strange alchemy of creativity itself - how something you begin can sit patiently, like a seed, until the right moment.
I use antique photo retouching inks and old slides from my personal photo archive. These inks traditionally erase flaws that occur in analog photography—to create a ‘perfect’ print. The inks interact serendipitously with the landscape, as stains, blotches, floating vessels, imaginary interventions, each suggesting different relationships to the land; political, environmental, formal, and corporeal. While once the images seemed tied to a global pandemic, now they seem to suggest and relate to climate chaos and the huge changes we are witnessing in our natural environment throughout the world.
