ARTIST STATEMENT
I am drawn to aesthetic qualities within man-made landscapes where function and form meet beauty. This project documents the condition of the Bates Mills that housed over a century of labor until their final closing in 1999. These large disintegrating industrial spaces, once filled with function and purpose, are haunted by entropy. The structures’ power and integrity are revealed by the skeletal rhythms and patterns exposed in the empty shells. Time has stripped the mills back to essential forms, and debris, dust, and air are all that populate the remains. Since I arrived in Lewiston, I have been pulled to these hollow monuments from a past time, only to find the buildings unexpectedly alive.
Work by several contemporary photographers who deal with the man-made landscape and man’s interaction with the environment influence me, specifically Edward Burtynsky’s Manufactured Landscape project, Andreas Gursky’s Ruhrtal, David Maisel’s Black Lake project, and Scott Peterman’s Sao Paulo. Like them, I exhibit large color photographs so viewers experience the space through the scale and details.
In my work I explore the boundary between representing aesthetic forms and reporting factual information. Color, shape and line are things within themselves in the flattened space of a photograph. Lint clinging to the walls, a scratch in cement, and subdued tones of decay can be used as formal elements as if the image were an abstract painting.
I am interested in the intrinsic connection between the photograph and the world. Representation in hand-made images is illusory, but photographs are special because they can be mirrors of specific times and places. These archival digital prints will be displayed in the Lewiston/Auburn Museum of Industry and Labor, as a record of these spaces before their eventual renovation or destruction.
Images
