Chromogenic prints, 8x8"
On my long and frequent drives between Northern Idaho and Western Oregon I would often pull over to collect butterflies that had been hit by cars in their attempts to cross the highway. These images are direct scans of their bodies.
Like antiquarian death photographs where the subject is depicted as sleeping, here the butterflies are also transformed - their lifeless bodies frozen, some as if still in flight. Seemingly preserved like organic remains in amber, an aura of melancholic idealism haunts these pieces. I regard them as symbolic frozen moments of "blissful" time, indicative of what we eternally attempt to contain, yet what possesses no grounded form. Slick photographic surfaces cradle figments of lightness, referencing death both literally and symbolically. By "death" I not only mean the departure of a loved one, but the passing of experience itself, whether it be marriage or youth, or briefer moments "protected" within memory.
3x3", chromogenic prints
These images more directly reveal the butterfly as carcass. Juxtaposition with the former pieces results in a tension between such diametrically opposed forces as union and disintegration, impermanence and permanence, and lightness and weight.
It is the exhilarating spaces between these polarizations that – seemingly – time is captured, breath is halted, and authentic experience is distilled.