“Decay Utopia Decay” installation view, Portrait Society Gallery, Next Fair, Chicago, May 2011
Decay Utopia Decay (1996-2012)
An body of work about our personal desperation to create a paradise and record its existence at our isolated rural Wisconsin farm. Such perfection can only exist in the haze of the past or future, making it absurd to approach it with the present-ness of photography, even with camera formats as reflectively cumbersome as 30×36 inches or as spontaneous as small-gauge 8mm movies. Our decaying, aging existence provides us with a stage as we face off with the elements, the uncontrollable plant world, broken-down farm implements, groundhogs, wasps, and mosquitoes. A home-movie rock-opera about this low-impact, non-time-specific, utopian lifestyle, negotiating commodity fetishization, dis-ease, and decomposition will be installed in a wigwam made of poplars harvested from our farm, surrounded by large format photographs printed in antiquarian processes.
View self-portrait images on Flickr
View vegetable portrait images on Flickr
View Decay Utopia Decay film (part 1, part 2, part 3) on YouTube