Concrete 612 (Medellin 2013) - Limited Edition of 5 Photograph

I am a native New Yorker, now living in Colombia, South America. I have been making photographs for 45+ years, and in the early 2000s, I decided to concentrate on my personal work. In terms of artistic influences, I have a deep affinity for early and mid-20th Century art: Expressionism, Surrealism, Dadaism, Merz and Abstract Expressionism. The Latin term, imago ignata (unknown image), describes a composition of colors and shapes that have little correspondence to the world of external reality. These photographs are of weathered surfaces, graffiti, random paint, or faded handbills FOUND on walls, lampposts, and doors in the streets of New York, Los Angeles, Havana, Medellin, and other cities. Throughout history, many artists have found inspiration in the street: da Vinci, Schwitters, Brassaï, Rauschenberg, and Basquiat, all come to mind. In the 1920s, Kurt Schwitters began incorporating discarded materials found in the street: newsprint, string, sackcloth, wire mesh, into a series of collages (as did Robert Rauschenberg in the 1950s and 60s). Schwitters famously asserted that the use of nontraditional materials in image making is as valid and as important as paint. To me, Schwitters’ use of found materials suggested an unexpected avenue for the exploration of the imagination. Traditionally, abstract or imaginary imagery has been the domain of painting. However, by the process of photographing a surface or object and cropping out any reference to its physical context or size, it is my intention to abstract and transform it into an intangible realm of color, composition, mood, and mystery.