Carnal Knowledge:
View these images as gigapan panoramas here:
These images are from an ongoing series of self-portraits titled "Carnal Knowledge." The images capture my body at the distance I am able to sprint into the composition over the duration of the camera's 10-second self-timer. While typically considered a euphemism for sexual intercourse, I use the reference to carnal knowledge to suggest a fleshy and unmediated interaction with landscape, place, and the history of these representations.
I intend to investigate the process and history of landscape representation in visual culture. I am particularly interested in interrogating periods of Romanticism in the 18th and 19th centuries in the work of painters such as Bierstadt, Friedrich, Moran and Turner. Additionally, I trace contemporary photographic representation of landscape by revisiting sights of iconic images made by artists such as Ansel Adams, Richard Misrach, and Edward Burtynsky.
I generally consider works of art to be records of performed interactions with the subject. Much of my interest is in expanding what that record might suggest or contain. I place the resulting work in the margins between performance and representation. The German Romantic painter, Caspar David Friedrich, frequently employed the Rückenfigur as a compositional device inviting the viewer into the scene. Similarly, I place myself in the image as a performative element. I contemplate the perceptual revolution of the 19th century when the railroad, the telegraph and the camera (in the motion studies of Edward Muybridge) transformed the experience of space, time, and landscape from a static, contemplative gaze to one of frenetic velocity. Sprinting into the composition also reflects the largely mythological stories of J. M. W. Turner having himself lashed to the mast of a ship to acquire visceral inspiration for his 1842 painting "Snow Storm "“ Steam-Boat off a Harbour's Mouth."
My efforts at landscape photography relate to my ongoing inquiry into concepts of the picturesque, the sublime, Romanticism, scale and our relationship to place.
