California Foothills 1/10 - Limited Edition of 10 Photograph

There is a space between the mundane and the mythical where I’d like my images to reside. Larry Sultan refers to it as “that ambiguity…between the ordinary and the surreal or the extraordinary.” Like Sultan, I prefer to find that in what already exists rather than to create a set or build it in Photoshop. There is plenty of magic in the everyday if one pays attention, and it doesn’t have to be bold and busy. It can be still and quiet, hinting at a narrative, as in the work of Joyce Tenneson, Cig Harvey, William Eggleston, and Vivian Maier. As much as, or probably more than other photographers, though, my influences are literary. The presence of grace or magic in the ordinary characters and situations of a Flannery O’Connor or John Updike story dabble in the realm of the absurd in a quotidian setting. Like so many enduring stories, with my work I attempt to investigate and better understand what it means to be human: a recognition of otherness as well as of self. I am still blown away that other people will commit so intently to helping me bring an idea to life. With my first series, Beautiful Madness, I buried friends in crumpled paper, covered them in writing and paint, wrapped them in yarn and burned their fingertips with matches in an effort to depict the obsession and frustration that can consume a creative person who is unable to create. For my part, I spent two days staining and crumpling paper until my hands were cut and bleeding. I wrapped an entire piano (and my husband) with yarn, pulled up the carpet in my room and wallpapered two walls just to peel it all off and leave it in strips on the floor. When I begin considering a new project, I think about what I want to know about the subject, how I might translate that visually, and what new perspective I could offer. What can I do in the physical realm to prevent having to do it in post-processing? This part of the process takes a long time, sometimes months or a year of meditation and contemplation for me to make the first picture. Often, I have to force myself to schedule the first shoot before I feel ready—decide that I’ve got a strong enough foundation from which to leap. With the Architecture of Women series, the leap was a self-portrait in my bedroom. I liked the suggestion of intimacy, while the smudged mirror and unrecognizable face allowed for distance. For the project, I asked women I knew (no models,) and I sat beside them rather than stand in front of them with the camera.