Studio and exhibition space
430 Lincoln Road
Open to the public by appointment. All visitors must wear masks.
The urban landscape possesses a vocabulary unto itself: street signs, parking meters, sidewalks, bus stops, restaurants, automobiles, laundromats, ornamental trees and hedges, delivery trucks, utility poles, mailboxes, guy wires, traffic signals, graffiti, dumpsters, fire hydrants, billboards, parking garages, strip malls, high rises, houses of worship, apartment buildings, alleyways, bridges, underpasses, auto repair shops, razor wire, warehouses. . . The human presence is visible upon all its surfaces, every inch engineered and built by people.
Barriers of all kinds exist in the urban landscape—walls, chain link fences, gates, barred windows and reinforced doors—great shadow catchers, but also structures designed to impede access. The manmade materials, utilitarian and durable, are consistent: concrete, asphalt, metal, glass, paint, and plastic. In serving society they have replaced, concealed, or covered up the terrain that might impede people and the flow of commerce, the earth hidden under a hard, grey-black shell. I am interested in how our dependence upon the automobile, and the need to park it when not in use, has caused native grasses, flowering plants, and the trees to be replaced by parking lots and colossal garages (our new cathedrals) that take up thousands of acres of city space.
Many objects punctuate the urban landscape and reveal the narrative of the people who designed, built, and inhabit it. Thus, my work may be viewed as an archaeological endeavor, an excavation of the present, all of which remains subject, of course, to the timeless qualities of light and shadow the camera preserves and makes visible. My project will focus on my ongoing attempt to document, through photography and writing, the urban landscape of Miami Beach, Miami, and South Florida. I hope to collaborate with other artists to help reveal tensions related to development, gentrification, and the fragile natural environment, while simultaneously exploring traditional film photography’s aesthetic potential as a fine art medium.
