At my friend's suggestion, I've been looking at the work of Joel-Peter Witkin....- A talented photographer who shows rather grim, almost carnival or freak-show pictures of confronting subjects. These images are somewhat grotesque but it resonates with the idea of a local environment morphing with individual perception. Eastern philosophies even suggest this, in the sense that you are the world you see around you because you and your environment can never be seen from anything but a very personal interpretation.
I would like to think that I didn't perceive the world around me in such a morbid way, and I don't, but quite often I find myself in unsettling nightmares of this type at night. I tend to re-interpret them into my visual art, just like the symbolist Odilon Redon did. I work in polar opposites to not lose sight of the entire spectrum of interpretation in it's whole. Which is why I do things like painting pure abstracts and photo manipulation or life-drawing in the same intervals of work. Also I need to balance morbidity in art (like these images) with opposites like joy and humor.
This book I will be working on will show all ends of this scale in relation to people's interpretations of the city we live in. Like how morbid events taint an otherwise normal place, positive happenings can cause places to connote something beautiful. I guess that's also the basis of how advertising functions.
With abstract photography, painting, drawing and imagery we will document the connotations in their diversity. I'm still thinking this through but hopefully there will be grants and exhibitions available for this project.
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