Photo story

I like the abstraction of reality and facts. I particularly like abstraction when it obscures the original meaning of an image and allows for new truths to be revealed that may or may not have anything to do with the original. When documents serve the construction of new realities known as fiction we realize the true potential depth of our everyday experiences.

In a recent conversation with a group of friends visiting Hamburg from London via Sweden we discussed the history of revolutionary struggle in Germany through the Manifestos of Ulrike Meinhoff of the Red Army Faction of the 70's. After establishing the futility of armed revolt against economic and social policies we found reprehensible, I came to the conclusion that commercially distributed distopian science fiction was perhaps the only way to change the hearts and minds of a populace (myself included) utterly engaged in the entertainment complex of it's own oppressive regimes.



I believe in the power of distorting people's perspectives. I believe in the importance of re-evaluating the everyday every day as a way to understand anew how we relate to the things that surround us. Science fiction can be a lens through which we see the present either as a warning or a utopian hope. Science fiction is to narrative reality what Mylar can be to the photographic image.


Certain colors always asscoiate themselves with this notion of distopian science fiction for me. Perhaps the colors of Blade Runner are partially to blame... or cartoon notions of radioactivity..the nuclear green.... the red of the LED.... this image has the grain of artifice embedded in it. A sign of the technology that gave birth to it. The yellow suggests decay..the decay of a rotting piece of fruit left in the sun..... but the darkness proves that healthful yellow false... it is not sunshine.. .. all of this light is man made... there are robots in that darkness.




Blurring implies speed..and candy colors make for sickly sweet indulgence....... in the absence of clear form any imagined possibility is valid. Where will these images take you?



The turret of a metallic robotic castle. Cold hard metal and petrolium, the material of the future displacing man's appropriation of wood and animal power. rather than exploiting our surroundings we exploit AND destroy them.
Until eventually... slowly...in highly protracted fashion we destroy ourselves as the human footprint fades in a slow chemical burn...like the emulsion of a photograph slowly being gnawed away to reveal white paper....

Humanity leaves it's mark on the planet like a reflection in an oily Exxon pubble on the coast of Alaska.
The few survivors hide away in the remaining fascist metal structures reminded that this powerful order at one time meant that outside efficiency was at it's peak. "Mussolini made the train's run on time." Now this intimidating buildings protect us from the world we have destroyed. The world that now wants it's revenge.
Now... we are plastic people.