art projects + series

The images in this collection are part of a broader, personal journey … they form a fragmentary narrative woven together from various bits and pieces of my dreamworld … they are a kind of conceptual-symbolic documentation of my inner life.

THIS IS MY PRIMARY PERSONAL PROJECT

On better days, on days with less pain … I go to sleep dreaming of a world re-enchanted, imbued with the Sublime … a world once again enveloped within the atmospherics of the Absolute.

THIS IS MY PRIMARY PERSONAL PROJECT

This series deals with "found non-objects" … the “unseen” gaps and rifts in nature … the inconsistencies and lacunae—absences that exist, in part, because we impose our own radically incomplete boundaries upon the natural landscape.

I confront the viewer with landscapes that barely coalesce into recognizable scenes.

In this series of images, glowing spheres articulate a stage: orb-like … orbital … tidal … perhaps lunar. The body moves through them, multiplying, stuttering, and refusing a unitary self.

I made these portraits of Susannah, a dancer, to “think out loud” with images … to restate and examine what Francis Bacon once said about flesh and identity.

There is a mystery alive in such natural objects … in such seemingly “ordinary” things. They are things in themselves … not merely objects of our perception or use, but beings with their own intrinsic presence and depth.

My memories of this enchanted place are bound up with its landscapes. Iceland consists of many incredible vistas … vast open spaces, open skies, mountains, streams and ponds, barren black rocks, volcanic sands, mossy stones, crashing ocean waves … soft misty light on some days, harsh sunny contrasts on others. All of these have now melded together in me.

Our passage through the vast expanse that envelops us is directed by an external compelling force. Once we’re thrown into the world, we cannot help but fall … and we keep on falling until we can fall no further … until we fall back into the void.

These are scenes from my hometown in Svishtov, Bulgaria. The photos were taken many years after my childhood, specifically on my last trip to Svishtov, in 2008. That visit was prompted by the impending death of my grandfather; he passed away several days after I arrived.

This project will appear in book form, to be published by Underlife Editions.

These images are from a beautiful, truly enchanted time in my childhood. I took these photos at the ancient Roman city of Leptis Magna, located near present-day Al-Khums, Libya (North Africa, on the Mediterranean coast). I would’ve been in grade 7, about 11 years old, at the time.