Big Boat Little Pond
These photographs explore the disparities between design and consumption; the often-dissonant stratifications of human ambition and adaptation that dominate the built environment. I study intersections of nature, architecture, and habitation, exposing the perpetual re-imaginings, capricious assemblies, ominous entanglements, and repeatedly regrettable consequences of human industry and hubris.
Architecture of Resignation: Photographs from the Mezzogiorno
In 550 B.C., construction began on one of the most gigantic temples in the Greek world. Today, visitors to Selinunte in southwestern Sicily can roam the scattered mass of fragments, which is simply known as Temple G. Imagining its once towering majesty would be a predictable behavior, however, in reality, the temple was still unfinished when the Carthaginians destroyed Selinunte in 409 B.C., and portions of the structure remain in the exact state as they were then. For me, this is truly a primary example of the type of projects that the history of southern Italy has had to endure.
In 2000, I began photographing in this region, and extended my exploration northward, all the way to Rome. During the course of the next seven years, I received glimpses into the complexity that is the Mezzogiorno and, through the making of photographs, my interrogations evolved into a set of images I now call Architecture of Resignation. What I found in this landscape is an elaborate set of physical, social, and political structures manifesting in an extraordinary folding together of visual information. On one level my photographs are referential and documentary—but on another level, they are about what cannot be explicitly seen, what is hidden and implied. My large-format, color images are meant to convey purposeful neutrality; constructions of selected non-fiction resonating between historical and contemporary meaning.
The larger narratives of the marks made, marks abandoned, and marks erased, represent numerous conquerors and occupiers, from the Greeks to the Romans to the Goths to the Saracens to the Spanish to the French to the Italian government of unification to the Allies in WWII, and even to the Mafia and the Camorra. The subsequent adaptations and resignations of those subject to this dominance are evident and represent a major portion of my photographic attention. Even when it was called the Kingdom of Naples or the Two Kingdoms of Sicily, the administrators here were authorized by other, foreign powers and were hugely influenced by local autocrats. Often, architecture and technology have only been used as political smoke screens, hiding the much greater exchanges of power. With great promises of progress, the land has been exploited and parceled out for the convenience of a few and accepted with resignation and submission by the many.
My attention was initially piqued by the glut of unfinished and unoccupied building projects, but even as my path digressed toward other dramas and mysteries of Italy’s South, I was still drawn to the numerous, peculiar concretions. I mean this both as a literal object and as a metaphor. The Italian consumption of concrete in all its forms, stretching back to Roman times, is representative of so many dreams per square foot poured; the ambitious leftovers dotting the landscape with shapes of every sort, the incremental compression of the various dreams both past and present. As Tobius Jones wrote, “(Italy) has aged like someone who has lived life in the fast lane, someone who has … the lines and scars to prove it.” The very face of its social and political history is worn in the landscape of the South; the country is now forced to stare reflexively into its molested self.
These pictures tell stories that expose the rise and fall of various colonial, political, and commercial powers, as well as the inspired, but often faltering, inventions of ambitious individuals. My photographs are not meant to edify or memorialize, though. Some of the subjects aspire to greatness, while others convey an uncanny indifference to their own fate. Some of the artifacts I’ve examined are more sculptural than architectural, in that they were never utilitarian, and at present, communicate a sense of pervasive anachronism. The images represent the (lack of) integrity of the systems being photographed, yet we view them through lenses enhanced by the timeless belief in the bel paese- the beautiful country- even as this place is foiled by layers of dysfunction and greed.
All Around the House: Photographs of American-Jewish Communal Life
Throughout more than three centuries of immigration to the United States, the Jewish population has restructured itself according to religious, political, economic, and social necessity. American Jews have developed distinct, subcultural communities which often express divergent interpretations of fundamental Judaism, while at the same time, negotiating the American mainstream. The underlying beliefs which guide Jewish congregations come from a diverse text of commentaries and interpretations which dictate different performative and communal behaviors. Isolationists contrast greatly with assimilation-minded progressives. Various "Conservative" congregations can resemble either the "Orthodox" or "Reform". All subsects, however, yield to a set of common beliefs, rites, and language, even as they separate into discrete groups.
From its inception, this photographic project was a generalist proposition, deliberately portraying complex demonstrations of traditional, Jewish values as they filtered through the screen of American culture. My critique involved the construction of images which interpreted personal, idiosyncratic responses within communal events and rituals. While environmental factors often influenced my previous work, I found that these photographs paid more attention to the power of figurative architecture and the complexities of gesture. Resonance and ambiguity are embedded in the very nature of contemporary Jewish practices; so therefore, my aim was to reflect these, sometimes, equivocal motivations through a visual interplay between figure, function, and form.
I also recognize this work as a profoundly personal critique. In many ways, my own life reflects that of many second-generation American Jews. Being the son of a Holocaust survivor, I had to negotiate many dilemmas that underscore the discrepancies between Jewish and non-Jewish life; the awareness that my identity was directly informed by historic trauma and displacement. There have always been at least two worlds to consider and at least two viewpoints by which to consider them. Growing up in this way gave me an intrinsically humanist perspective from which to evaluate my surroundings and has most certainly helped to inform this body of work.
Same Dream Another Time
When I made these photographs in the late 1980s and early 1990s, there were only two, major centers for legal gambling in the United States: Las Vegas, Nevada, and Atlantic City, New Jersey. Devoted to games, spectacles, and temporary diversions of all kinds, representing the ultimate immoderacies of American consumerism, these cities were designed to be architectural seductions, tapping the collective thirst for risk and reward. Still, under the influence of underworld kingpins, Las Vegas was fueling the needs of dream-seekers, utilizing a huge infrastructure of resources and hundreds of thousands of workers. It was the fastest-growing city in the country. Atlantic City was trading its worn out, seaside image for modern gambling and convention complexes, displacing thousands of local residents in the process and hoping to turn around the fortunes of the city and the state.
Especially appealing to me were the peripheral associations, which enriched an already complex, social, and physical structure: i.e., celebrities, prizefights, prostitution, beauty pageants, weddings, etc. As a photographer, I was fascinated with the accentuated layers and intersections of people, artifice, architecture, and landscape. I was searching for circumstances charged with expectation and aspiration; stirred by fantasy, so that, through my photographs, I might then strip away those expectations, exposing the symbols of desire alongside the realities of pretense and uncertainty. In this way I was hoping to construct images of visual and psychological tension, mirroring the complex processes that contrast imagination and reality.
Revisiting my archive of negatives now has necessarily suggested a different viewing of these pictures. Many photographs that I had originally ignored or rejected have found their way back into the body of this project and have commanded a new edit. This project is both a time capsule and an index of the contemporary, addressing themes that are every bit as acute today as they were thirty-five years ago.
Along the Divide: Photographs of the Dan Ryan Expressway
One of the nation’s most heavily traveled and notoriously dangerous expressways, the Dan Ryan cuts a giant swath through Chicago’s densely populated South Side neighborhoods. A fascinating urban ecosystem has developed around the road, an interwoven structure of human and industrial elements. Between 1981 and 1985 I produced thousands of images and traveled thousands of miles while grappling with the representational challenges inherent in this subject. It was an extremely formative body of work and became as much a vehicle for me as an artist as it has been a conduit for the millions of others who use it every year.
I wanted to examine the road as a massive expression of the urban lexicon. The considerable extent of the Dan Ryan’s influence over its surroundings, as well as the proliferation of adaptations to its unremitting presence, offered me an invaluable opportunity for photographic interpretation and construction. The enormity of its engineering continuously plays geographically off the incidental. As elements proceed through time and space, scale is measured both physically and historically. The ramifications of driving this expressway may range from total functionality to devastating dysfunctionality.
Still, the great subtext underlying all circumstances here is the politic that created the Dan Ryan and decided to whom its construction would benefit most. I have often referred to the Dan Ryan as a linear buffer, which acts as a cushion for those people who want a link to the city, but also want a definable separation from the “realities” of city life.
Ultimately though, my photographs are about the nature of representing such an enormous edifice; I consciously shifted format and attitude to better reflect the diversity of the environment and my understanding of it. A great challenge was to pre-visualize, often months or even years in advance, when and how I could best represent my ideas about this arterial organism. I had to become sympathetic with the Dan Ryan’s cycles and flows, its causes and effects. Many different activities and populations are involved with it at different times, and my approach often depended not only on the good will and cooperation of private individuals and public institutions but also on climatic and environmental disposition. Many of my subjects, both human and architectural, have since changed, moved, or disappeared, but the Dan Ryan remains a monolith of urban engineering and continues to affect the culture and commerce of Chicago and the nation.