Before moving on to the main themes of this episode of The Monochrome Chronicles, let me digress a bit. I want to describe an event that, while it was merely coincident in time, had a profound influence on my photography. This influence lays on the border between sleep and wakefulness, between subconscious and conscious experience.
One night a few years ago I dreamed that I had found a hole in the universe, a terribly frightening dream. At first, I was alone, space travelling, exploring the universe. I found the edge of the universe and began to examine it more closely, following along its huge curved surface from the inside. Then I discovered a leak, only a tiny hole but large enough to allow some matter to escape, in a thin but constant stream.
Waking up from the nightmare was difficult, probably a common experience when emerging from a nightmare. Several times I could feel myself trying to break through to consciousness. This felt like a physical struggle, like trying to emerge from a tar pit. Each time I could feel the nightmare pulling me back under. When I finally woke up, I sat on the edge of the bed feeling fatigued. I was shaking and panting and my heart was racing. These after-effects continued for maybe an hour or more before I felt safe enough to go back to sleep.
In the morning, I remembered the nightmare vividly. Paradoxically I wanted to go back there but at the same time I was afraid. This feeling, too, gradually faded…and I began thinking differently about my photography. I cannot make the connection now, but the nightmare made me see my photography from a new perspective. Many of my images are very, very dark, and I’d always thought they were too dark to exhibit. After the nightmare, I decided to meet this darkness head on. Explore it.
This experience was quite liberating. Again, I cannot explain how, but I am now more free in photography. And my skills have advanced considerably, I think. Why this should be is still a mystery to me. I try not to think about it or analyze it. It just is. I accept it.
The Hole in the Universe has gradually become another of my series. I had to dig in my archive to find some of the images that, while I’d printed them some time ago, seemed previously to be too dark or threatening. I’d kept them out of sight, in a box in the closet. Others were still in the negatives, not yet printed. And some were from my recent work, negatives that I’ve finally come to terms with. This series is in no way complete, it is ongoing.
The other sense that I get from this image is of being in prison. It sends me on a flashback to NYC, to a psychiatrist’s couch, an office off Madison Avenue. For years, I’d gone through a series of shrinks, discarding each one after the other like yesterday’s NY Times. Until I found a shrink – I don’t want to take this any further. Why does this image make me flashback to that period? Maybe it just reminds me of that office. Or of the memories that I’d dragged up – like the please-stop-hitting-me one. Maybe that was just false memory syndrome? I couldn’t stand it anymore. And so I fled. Then, the shrink went on sabbatical and I moved to Japan.
The perspective here is like the viewpoint of a small child, or maybe of a dog. It makes me feel like I’m so small and the room is too big. Funny, but there would seem to be no furniture in the room, only the walls, the ceiling and the window. If I remember correctly, I took this shot while laying flat on my back in bed. A child’s eye view of the world. Where have I been here before?
A darker side of the hole in the universe. It is easy to imagine something sinister happening here. Somewhere between childhood nightmares and adult horror stories. At the other extreme, the silence and the loneliness here are inviting, a good place to get lost. The fog gives the forest a moody ethereal feeling.
This image reminds me of the monsters under the bed. Is it true that these first three images give me flickers of childhood? No, that’s impossible, I have no memories of that time. But, why were the rooms so dark?
This scene is reminiscent of an abandoned gas station in a small village in the US. Perhaps Goodell, Iowa, population 131. In that sense it is a reminder of an era that disappeared long ago. Not nostalgia, but regrettably faded from memory.
Again, where is my interest? Oops, the perspective is out of kilter, the lines run off the frame, the house is falling backward – but these flaws draw the eyes into the image. The magical triangle is there, at least. The feeling is of sitting and waiting. The lights were on but nobody was home.
He does look like a corpse in a casket. So many friends and exes have died and I never saw a single one in his casket. That’s not part of our ritual and besides, I ran away. What was I afraid of? Not afraid of death. Afraid of the intimacy of loss. A black widow spider. More dead men than live ones in my address book. Ghosts of the recently departed.
This man seems to have fallen through the hole in the universe, or was at risk of doing so. He was sitting in a falla, a kind of open-air shelter, at one of the neighborhood squares, sleeping or possibly in a stupor. In the early dawn, the streets were uncharacteristically quiet, and the cool morning air revitalized me. Nonetheless the loneliness in this image is disturbing. I try not to judge but only to observe. I can only imagine that this man’s loneliness was existential.
Some photographers have claimed that they lost their creativity when they gave up drugs and booze. How to tap into that creativity zone? Therein lies the difference between taking pictures and making photographs. I’ve been there but usually I only recognize this afterward. This is part of my photographer’s rush.
This is another part of my photographer’s rush. I only experience it when I’m alone. That’s why I have to go into the field, or to the streets, by myself. And sometimes, rarely, I feel the rush in the darkroom. Maybe the darkroom is that place between consciousness and the subconscious. When I go into the darkroom I have to wait for a while until I enter that state. Even when I get there, the rush comes only rarely. But what a feeling when it does come. I cannot describe it in words. That’s why I’m a photographer.
These encounters were fraught with approach-avoidance for me. Though part of me wanted to get closer, she seemed to be so fragile and otherworldly that I kept my distance. The result was this image — amorphous, ambiguous. I could easily imagine her slipping through the hole in the universe. Maybe no one would have noticed that she had vanished.
Well, enough about my hole in the universe nightmare. All these images are very close to me. Too close. I’ve been there many times, but long ago. Maybe this is too close to a self-portrait? Suffice it to say that my impressions from the nightmare continue to influence my photography, whether consciously or unconsciously, I don’t know. This influence extends into my street photography, especially at night but also during the day, but more so in my portrait photography. My little voice guides me.