INSISTENT WHISPERS
Insistent Whispers grew out of an ongoing body of work I started in 2017 to investigate aspects of the Southwest, titled The Deconstructed Self. When I started that work, I was especially interested in documenting the region’s non-historical, utilitarian architecture.
About a year ago, a subset of photographs crept into this body of work. I realized that faint “presences” were appearing in my images as ghostly shadows of vegetation against otherwise the typical stucco walls that line Southwestern architecture. These intangible presences, like phantoms, were superimposed onto the built environment of manmade, manufactured structures. The formal, linear framework of architecture persisted in this work as a more elusive organic element had begun entering my compositions.
My initial decision to document trees and other plant forms may have been unconscious; hauntings from my internal world of dreams and untold stories. The shadows gradually asserted themselves as markers pointing to a doorway to walk through or a stairway to ascend. Other times the apparitions hovered like delicate drawings etched by light. Eventually, they covered the entire picture plane.
By allowing these whispers to come forth into consciousness, their symbolic language is a reminder of the ways the past influences present life. Listening to their call and remembering that we are all governed by the presence of invisible forms – the echoes of our ancestors, our parental influences, our hidden dramas - and engagement with the mystery of these is key to becoming truer to who we are.
