omg

They're not exactly Certain Places or Microwave Eruptus but ... • click to embiggenOMG. Most out there are familiar with the adage regarding the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. Well, yesterday PM, as I was processing pictures from this past weekend, my plan was to post a couple of them this AM for your viewing pleasure. But, first thing this AM, my brain was unexpectedly fried once again. It was another of those mind-blowing experiences - much like the effect of having your head struck by a dumdum bullet - that really messes you up.

The incident deals with 2 primary concepts:

1. Everybody has a twin somewhere on the planet.

2. Everything that can be pictured has been pictured.

Regarding concept # 1, there have been several instances in my life where I have mistaken for someone else based upon my physical appearance. There have also been times when someone who "thinks just like me" has touched my life. But ...

Regarding concept # 2. ... seldom, if ever, have I experienced any close encounters of the the photography kind - someone who thinks and acts just like me, photography-wise. That is to say, someone who pictures the things that I picture in a manner very similar to how (and why) I picture them.

That is, until this AM when I discovered - thanks to Miguel Garcia-Guzman on his blog, [EV +/-] Exposure Compensation ~ of photography and photographers - the work of Catharine Stebbins.

I posted the 2 pictures on this entry as examples of my 2 bodies of work - ku, landscapes of the natural world and decay - that are remarkably similar to Stebbins' 2 bodies of work - CERTAIN PLACES and MICROWAVE ERUPTUS.

Other than the similarity of our subject matter - much of my ku work is of the messy chaos / complexity of the natural world, and, all of my decay is of food gone awry - and the similarity of our picturing approach - somewhat less than idealized and conventionally seen views of the natural world, and, plated food pictured from above using natural light (mine from a window, her's from a door) on the same background (mine a countertop, her's a floor) - what strikes me as incredibly odd / interesting / downright eerie is that both of our Artist Statements are remarkably similar.

Regarding her CERTAIN PLACES work, Stebbins writes:

The right place drives the tedium from my mind and sends me racing into a world of imagination and possibility ... [T]hese are portraits of the evocative feelings and emotions that overcome me; an invitation to go where the past coexists with the present, uncertainty mingles with anticipation, and the familiar delivers the unexpected.

Intuition and memory profoundly shaped my experience of place. The genesis of this series began on childhood vacations, as my family crisscrossed the west in our station wagon on long summer vacations. The view through the backseat window became my portal into a world of imagination and possibility ....

Her compete statement is HERE

Regarding my Adirondack Dream Memories I have stated:

For me, memories are like dreams. They tickle, tease, and sometimes taunt my conscious self with slippery remembrances that can't be fully owned. Tangled hints of experience and feelings past swirl and ferment in a cauldron of haunting visions that, however vague, are indelibly etched on a virtual fabric tinted with the bittersweet wash of ambiguity and the quest to understand.

As I grope furtively and photographically through the fields of genius in the details, I feel like a stranger in a strange land where my photographs seem more like jamais vu glimpses of lost connections to something intuitively known rather than documents of fully conscious waking experieinces.

My compete statement is HERE

One of Stebbins' reasons for her MICRoWAVE ERUPTUS work - "Something about a splatter of tomato sauce, and burnt edged bubbles in a pool of melted cheese called out "photograph me!" - is also remarkably similar to my reason about decay - it has always called out to me.

Now, it should be stated that I am not stating that our work or our statements are identical but the similarities are, indeed, very remarkable - especially so considering that there are not just 1, but 2 bodies of work that are so similar.

This just whole thing just tends to freak me out. Feel free to draw your own conclusions.

Comments

[Mike]

I'd smoke a little less of the old home grown in the AM. That should clear up the old bean. Have a nice day.