What the heck is art, anyway?

This kind of work, the stuff we call art, is a way of communicating experience to one another. There are things that cannot be expressed in words and so we must turn to other means of affecting someone. A text book or an instructional manual can only explain so much. If we want to take another person through an experience, guide them through a piece of life, we must devise a means of communication that bypasses reason and logic and instead puts us directly into the path of a train of emotion and reaction.

I have never approved of artist statements. I think that when an artist says “My work is about...” it dilutes the effect of the art. Art should stand on it's own or fall. It should never be buttressed by a demand that it be interpreted in a particular way. The interpretation is always unique to the individual viewer or reader or listener. And while there is a time and a place for analysis, usually in the spaces between viewings, the real value of art is that it can jolt us into a new moment in life; it gives us a chance to briefly live in another person's body.

Art is, for the artist, a way to access what is normally hidden within themselves. I look at other photographer's work and wish I could do something like that. I go off and I try to copy some effect only to find my copy has been shaped more by the way I see the world than by the original. It is as if I am handicapped to see the world only with my own eyes.

I look at the photographs I make and there is something deeply satisfying in the better ones. Clearly my photographs will not be to everyone's tastes. Some may be affected, others may find nothing in them that makes sense. For myself, I find upon looking at them that it is as if the world, for a moment, alines itself and everything can be understood. It is as if the chaotic noise of the world slips into a simple and calming melody; that the framed image pushes away all the broken, jumbled lines and shapes leaving only a simple, self supporting form.

Perhaps it is because I am frequently overwhelmed by the noise and chaos of the world, that these photographs provide a sort of escape, a moment of calm that I can retreat to. They may be other things as well. Once the photograph becomes a fixed image, the affect it might have on a person becomes their own experience. I have mine and any other viewer has theirs. I hope they are valuable to another person, but mostly I take these photographs to excavate my own experiences and hopefully find something of value.