For transplants and shutterbugs, a work of prose poetry and a gallery of photographic sculptures and images from the Midwest, abutting images text, photos, and grass with memories and nostalgia in photography now. What began as a letter of apology to our daughter for not having the right type of family photo album, turned to questions of what anyone could expect, and is now addressed to the erudite photo-book collector who senses a shift in the onslaught of images. Sod People is both an exhibition of prints abstracting the book, and artists’ book filled with prose of personal iterations of photographic theory.
Photos covering the albums like sod placed to make a mid-western lawn is as much the story of my family, and this place we are putting down roots, as the problem of what to save, how to make a family photo album at the dawn of the 21st century. The metaphor of sod is at once the appearance of order and yet also meaninglessness of the hundreds of thousands of inherited photos, digital images, ephemera , and the places we come from to anyone other than those who belong in that place with those people. Context takes precedent in this collection, as the arrangement and anecdotal additions we’ve come to expect are impacting our vision, desire, and memory more than any change in technology.
The album, like the lawns in the mid-west causes particular distress should it be missing, damaged, or disturbed…
Reading the first few pages of Sod People (CircaCirca Studio Artist’s Book Published 2016) on Instagram: #sodpeople
Sod People is one chapter of a larger project of artists books inspired by the Walking Artists movement of 1960’s, this meandering project uses the cadence of a walk, to draw together vignettes of poetry and photographic vision. I’m interested in the pedestrian experience in both senses of the word – a walk as a way to access the deepest of interior narratives, using the most ubiquitous technology or the point of departure in the seemingly banal.
