WILDERNESS
1994-2004

In the early 1990s I lived in Providence, Rhode Island, in a landscape at turns overgrown and barren. New England row houses abutted empty lots and crumbling factories, all joined in a web of trees, weeds, cyclone fences, and high tension wires. Layers of growth and decay confounded attempts at easy interpretation. The landscape, formed largely by accident and neglect, felt somehow like the work of a larger process. I imagined an unconscious synergy between the work of people, plants, and erosion, shaping these spaces over many years. When I moved and continued the project in an industrial section of Brooklyn, the mix of these elements changed, but the underlying sensibility felt familiar. There was much to explore between the shadows and detritus and weeds.

I titled the work Wilderness in response to these impressions. The word has held different meanings for different cultures over the years, but has usually conveyed a sense of mystery, of otherness, and of escape from the borders of the comfortable and the known. Wilderness has named what we fear but at the same time long for, often with a sense that there, away from the comforts and attachments we usually seek, we might somehow find ourselves.

 

PRINTS

Prints are available in gelatin silver or carbon pigment ink. Each image is available at a single size, either 4 x 5 inch contact print-size, 5 x 7-1/2 inches, or 9 x 11-1/2 inches.

The silver prints are on Eastern European warm-toned, baryta-coated papers that are no longer available. They’re toned in combinations of selenium, sulfides, and gold, in a process that’s both painstaking and failure-prone. This is why the editions are small. No more of these prints will be made.

The ink prints are made with several warm-toned monochrome, carbon-pigment inks on heavy, matte-finish, 100% cotton fiber paper from Germany. This printing process, devised by John Cone of Cone Editions, is one of the most beautiful I’ve ever used. The difference in price between the silver prints and ink prints reflects the edition sizes, not quality.

Silver prints are in editions of varying sizes up to ten. Ink prints are in editions of 20.
Silver prints are $1500 regardless of size. 
Ink prints are $900 regardless of size. 
Wilderness prints come corner-mounted to an archival window mat.

Some images exist only as silver prints, others only as ink. Please write for availability.

Print purchases do not include reproduction rights. Please see the copyright notice.
I’m required to collect 8.875% sales tax on prints delivered to or picked up in NYC.

 

LICENSING

Please write with your proposal, including as many details as possible.