On heroes and ghosts.
The first image in this collection is, in my opinion, the best photo I’ve ever made. You should see the final print! It came on the heels of the Wilderness series, but clearly did not belong among the other, bleaker, landscapes. It felt more alive and I wanted it to lead off a new project in similar style, but I couldn’t figure out where it was heading.
I made several attempts at shuffling this image to see what would happen to it, and I really enjoyed the results. There was a landscape there, but only in suggestion, and I kept wondering what the process would look like in reverse. Could I take a subject represented in disparate forms and make a cohesive whole?
I found inspiration in one of my favorite places: Hollywood cinema. I thought about how every explosion in an action film could be combined into one explosion. How every cowboy could become one cowboy. All portraits of ideas. Just as real, and just as fake, as their movie counterparts.