I
believe in chaos. Time will continue moving, events
will happen. And whatever does happen, was the only
thing that could have happened. That’s not to
say that I had no choice in it, or that it was fated
to happen no matter what I chose. Just that whatever
I do causes chain reactions that, in turn, create the
events around me. And luck is really just the way we
interpret chaos into terms we can understand and deal
with, or feel we have some control over.
When
I began this project, I had no idea that it would make
all this clear to me. It started out as a game—a
symbolic method to remove myself from a country I didn't
want to be in. Recently returned from almost a year
living in Spain, I was disenchanted with the U.S., to
say the least. To me, my long-lost American friends
seemed painfully unchanged and unaware of everything
I had been through. My old life sagged on me, ten sizes
too big for my new frame. I was completely disconnected
from everything.
At
the start, the project was a way for me to visually
disconnect myself from my surroundings. The process
is simple: shoot an entire roll of film of a specific
subject, then rewind it back into the canister and begin
shooting the roll again, this time with a different
subject matter. So, for example, I might go outside
and shoot a roll of nature shots, then rewind the canister,
put it back in the camera, and shoot a roll of studio
self-portraits on top of it. This creates multiple-exposure
images inside the camera, which may or may not line
up with each other, depending on how the film loads
the second time around. Sometimes days, weeks, or months
go by between shooting each layer of images. All of
these factors create images that appear completely random,
but in fact, have a lot to do with process, organization,
and the choices made after the film is developed.
Through
chaos, chance, accident, luck, or whatever you believe
in, the images have been recorded and are part of my
reality, and now part of yours. When you look at them,
remember that, as Jean Baudrillard says, "seen
as a whole, in terms of meaning, the world is disappointing.
Seen in detail and by surprise, it is always perfectly
obvious."
