In my practice, I seek to create refracted portraits excavated from memory and myth that assert, I am here. Simultaneously expanding and compressing time, the portraits insist on the continuity of presence.
In Tropopause, I consider portraiture, identity and time travel through memories and stories. As human beings, we share the fact that we are made of stories. We descend from ancestors. We hold collective beliefs, collective memories, collective traumas. We live our lives, and our memories live on with those who loved us and remember us. Our stories spin out across the universe – unfettered by realities of time and space.
I have been drawn to this work because I am a lover of stories. I believe that when we share stories, we create powerful bonds – empathy and understanding. At a personal level, I believe that this work, and in fact all of my work, is born of a sense of absence within me. My family did not archive the family stories. Neither of my parents used a camera. There are only three photographs of me under the age of eighteen. And the collection of photographs of generations past is equally incomplete. This has led to a great sense of loss for me, and also curiosity. I believe I became an artist in order to explore, like an archeologist digging through the layers of the past, who I am and where I come from.
I’ve been in search of the tropopause.
The tropopause is the calm belt of air where earth’s atmosphere meets the stratosphere. The space is safe, without turbulence, and that explains why pilots seek its tranquility. From that vantage point, there is clarity of both the journey already traveled and the road ahead. I think of tropopause as the place where we put aside our petty concerns and our biases and our ignorance and our arrogance. The tropopause is where we stand in our own truth and realize that nothing is truly ever lost to us.
Could this way help us to resolve our differences and remember our shared humanity? Knowing that are all such complex and extraordinary works of art and science, could we not recalibrate our approach to co-existence?
This work was created using photography and mercury glass (silvered glass). I made photographs of objects, including photographs I have taken, as reflected into mercury glass. I often repeat this process until the object itself is now blurred or transformed into something otherworldly. The process is as important as the output itself, as it takes me deeper into the subconscious and gives me to access to what feels like remembered moments.

1. Bob’s Heart Surgeon Discovered A World of Memories and Myths

This is a layered composition, showing a man’s chest scar from open heart surgery and the suggestion of a landscape reflected in mercury glass. The journey begins here.

A Baby, A Buddha

A wise being guards the tropopause entrance. I used a vintage glass negative reflected into mercury glass and made the photograph on the grass. We are never far from Mother Earth.

Learning to See

We must teach ourselves to look simultaneously at the past and at the present to truly see who a person is.

Red Alert. Do Not Stop.

So many of us are stopped from going beyond the obvious, the shallow, the conventional. We must press on, ignoring the warnings. Be brave.

I See My Mother In a Bathing Suit

A photograph of my mother, probably dating to 1928 or ’29. She is my past; she is also my present. I wonder why no one noticed the suit is on backwards. I want to take care of her.

Beauty in the DNA

By creating multiple layers of photographs I made using mercury glass, I am able to create the surreal but ultimately beautiful experience of letting go and accepting.

Pushed/Pulled

A photograph I made of hands playing a keyboard, reflected into mercury glass and duplicated. The duality of hands pushing and pulling show the movement between our past and present lives.

Astral Baby

Souls are rising, souls are returning to the earth. The stories continue. We are layers of stories. This was reflected into mercury glass six times, resulting in an astral map of creation.

My Mother Again/Still

As long as we remember those we have lost, nothing is ever truly lost to us. The image of my mother in her backwards bathing suit stays with me. She was a beautiful child.

The Tropopause

How I image the spiritual place we seek for clarity and reassurance. We were here. We mattered. And now we are matter.