"Frog garage" 18x18" digital print 2006
The Garage Series was the first of my three photography projects inspired by the music of American composer Morton Feldman (1926-1987). In it’s initial form the Garage Series existed as individual gelatin silver prints (3.5 x 3.5") and were part of a larger project entitled Studies. I thought of the the singular garage images suspended in black space as character studies or portraits.
Garage Series, silver gelatin print 3.5x3.5" 1999-2001 "Toothless Garage"
Garage Series, silver gelatin print 3.5x3.5" 1999-2001 "Brick Garage"
Garage Series, silver gelatin print 3.5x3.5" 1999-2001 "Veiled Garage"
Garage Series, silver gelatin 3.5x3.5" 1999-2001 "Black Pyramid Garage"
Garage Series Quintet: Five silver gelatin 3.5x3.5" prints behind matt windows 1999-2001
Then I fell in love with the garage pictures and devoted most of my energies making more and more of them until there was enough until finally, that's the only kind of photograph I could make at the time. Eventually the collection of images became identified as The Garage Series. I exhibited the mini-images individually in 10x10 frames and in sequenced sets of five, the Quintets. My fantasy is that the quintets simulated the experience of walking down an alley at night. And because I had been listening to the music of Morton Feldman almost exclusively at the time, I began to associate the images to Feldman's music. The quintets invoked for me, in their horizontal flow of graphic relationships, a kind of visual/musical notation. (Click here to see more garage quintets).
I began studying Feldman's writings about his music, and critical writings about his work and that influenced the Garage Series photographs all the more. Feldman's music often involved the suspension of sounds in space. He would allow sounds to reverberate until they dissolved, decayed--decomposed back into silence. I came to see the garage images as self-luminous sound-gems suspended in a nocturnal sky, and as visual symbols for Feldman's sounds suspended in musical space, in silence. In the garage project, and all of my other Feldman-inspired photography projects, silence is represented by the black space surrounding the images.
Digital Version of The Garage Series
In 2006 I began making 18x18” digital print versions of selected garage images, expanding the black space around the garage form. Once the digital garage images had been completed, the idea of making Garage Triads then followed, influenced by the Triadic Poems I had been making as part of the Feldman-inspired project entitled Triadic Memories (2003-07). I also used garage images to construct Chromatic Fields for the Triadic Memories Project (I have included one of the Chromatic Field garage images, below).
Roll roofing covered Garage, 18x18”
Grid Garage with bankboard, 18x18”
Skeleton Garage, 18x18”
Dark Garage, top tipped, 18x18”
Old limping Garage, 18x18”
Garage with triangle opening 18x18”
Garage with missing tooth 18x18”
Chromatic Field (Garage facade) 21x21”
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Thing Centered Photographs
As I explained above the early garage photographs were a thematic group that emerged within the larger project entitled Studies (1994-2000). I also thought of the garage images, then, as thing photographs, which was an ongoing body of work, begun in the 1980’s inspired by a kind of poetry which Robert Bly characterized as "Object" or "Thing" poems. In 2003 I transitioned many of the silver gelatin "Thing" photographs into digital inkjet print versions, including some of the garage images in the project entitled Thing Centered Photographs.
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...............Portfolio of Links ................
To see images and texts for the two other Feldman-inspired photography projects click on the project titles below.
The Departing Landscape 2007-2010
Other Music-Inspired Projects. This link includes several other music-inspired photography projects I've created over the years, the earliest dating back to 1976 in homage to an expatriate American jazz musician Steve Lacy.
Makom : Milwaukee Places
Other Music-Inspired Projects. This link includes several other music-inspired photography projects I've created over the years, the earliest dating back to 1976 in homage to an expatriate American jazz musician Steve Lacy.
Makom : Milwaukee Places
Welcome Page to The Departing Landscape website which includes the complete hyperlinked listing of my online photography projects dating back to the 1960's, my resume, contact information, and more.
