As a result of prior professional experience in mechanical
drawing and design, an affinity, with the period commonly referred to
as the American Industrial Revolution, has evolved. In time, my attention
has turned to the direct connection between it and the American amusement
industry, which was born, of that “revolution”. It is, the
invention of illusion and by extension, the impact the carnival, circus
and amusement parks had on American culture at the turn of the century
that is at the foundation of my work. In my photographic collage work,
Invented landscape, I use vintage steel plate and wood block engravings
from patent journals published from 1840-1890, during the peak of the
American Industrial Revolution. These highly detailed illustrations
are of newly invented contraptions which were used primarily in manufacturing,
mining, farming and transportation. These mechanical devices are significant
because they in fact changed the “civilized” world by impacting
how people lived and worked. Ultimately, their use meant greater efficiency
and productivity and thus provided a new opportunity for leisure and
play, for a new “working class”. This connection that evolved,
between the machine and the world of illusion is central to the Invented
Landscape work. Consequently, these vintage engravings are collaged
onto black and white (silver prints) photographs I make of Coney Island
in New York City during the “off season”, when the amusement
park rides are partially dismantled.
Coney Island, made up of Steeplechase Park, Luna Park and Dreamland, was significant because it became the quintessential playground to the world. As the single most popular destination for entertainment at the turn of the century, the Coney Island amusement parks most dramatically symbolized a cultural upheaval in a changing America. Amusement parks became surreal landscapes and thus provided an escape from a society confined by the Victorian morals of an elite minority. Led by political and cultural leaders from the Protestant middle class, they declared the virtues of education, refinement, responsibility and restraint. Coney Island, on the other hand, was a place that contrasted work and play, pain and pleasure, control and chaos and fact and fantasy. It was the manifestation of a surrealist dream (and nightmare), a place for the expression of individual hysteria, passion and desire! In the Invented Landscape images, the Coney Island environment
provides a space to merge both metaphorically and literally, the machines
of the industrial revolution and the amusement park landscape. They
are a fusion of the functional forms of labor and the fun and fantasy
of the carnival. More importantly, they are both a reflection of the
disparity that exists between the finite and the infinite and the thread
that connects the surreal to the real. In the most recent work, human
figures inhabit the landscape. They are anonymous and yet represent
us all. They have no identity but seem familiar. The figure is intended
as a metaphor for all humankind and symbolizes the fragility of our
relationship to the earth and the nature of our existence both physically
and spiritually. Both from a purely photographic perspective and on
a more conceptual level, the Invented Landscape work rests on the tension
between the literal photograph (what is captured by the camera) and
the constructed collage (what is invented as illusion), and between
what we perceive to be real and the surreal. The fabricated/invented
landscapes provide a world where hopes and fears are called into question
and where the relationship between technology and mankind can be seen
as both compatible and in contrast. At the very least the Invented Landscape
images are double-edged swords. |