Production & Decay of Strange Particles
2014
A body of photo work shot in a huge warehouse where I precariously hang off the ground about 30 feet above the scene I'm shooting. I think of this work as a collaboration with the models because not only are they making up the shapes and poses that form the final prints but they also bring their own wardrobe. They can choose anything to wear as long as it's bright and colorful and we set up the outfits together. I've been constantly impressed with their fashion choices as much as the variety of amazing abstract shapes each person has brought to the project.
I've shot dancers, an aerialist, models, Burners, friends, and even a very exuberant chef, who've all brought something incredible to the collaboration. The work is along the same lines as my "Dendroid” print work and other digitally manipulated crumples and smashups I’ve worked with over the last 5 years, but this time the focus is less on digital manipulation and more on human manipulation, asking each model to interpret the scope of the work in their own way and supply a set of poses they felt best represented an abstract shape with lines and angles made sharp and pointed by an organic more rounded form, the human body.
The titles are all derived from classic episodes of “The Outer Limits” named as such because I felt as though I was at a departure from my own personal norm in making this work, jutting off in a different yet related direction to the space my work usual lives in.