Altered States of Agoraphobia

Thursday, April 26, 2012

Some New Images

Photographically it's been a slow year for me. I have been held up creatively with study, work and some legal issues but these images are a handful of my personal favorites (made in Overland Park and Lenexa, KS and also Weston MO.) Now as April draws to a close my schedule is finally beginning to change and a low grade depression I've been feeling for a while now is beginning to lift which will, I hope, allow me more free time to get out and make new work. Please check back for more psycho-geographical posts coming soon.

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

AUBADE Magazine Issue 8

The new issue of AUBADE Magazine has just been published by Chris Turner through Magcloud.com. Issues 8 will possibly be the last in this really great series. For just over a year Chris, it's editor and curator, has worked hard to produce this quality arts journal of painting, photography and writing to a consistently high level as a non-profit creative venture and labor of love. If you haven't seen it please follow the link below to view or buy the latest and previous issues, It's well worth a look.

The photo above which is from my Overland Park project appears in issue 8.

AUBADE Magazine Issue 8 can be found here:

http://www.magcloud.com/browse/issue/369719

Friday, December 23, 2011

HAPPY HOLIDAYS FROM ASA

Happy Holidays from the Altered States of Agoraphobia.

Many thanks for all your enthusiasm and support. Love Simon.

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Automobile as Tripod

Shawnee, KS

Dodge City, KS

Junction City, KS

Overland Park, KS

This post came about during an end of year review of some of the work I'd made. It's true that not all of these images were actually shot this year and there are in fact several others which I have not posted as part of this selection, but it has been interesting for me to filter some of my personal favorites out and view them together like this and to acknowledge the Automobile as Tripod as part of my method of working in certain conditions. Although there are several images in this style posted here, it's worth mentioning that sometimes several months, 1000's of miles and 100's of photographs sit between the making of each of them.

Welcome

About the photographs: These images are a search for a personal orientation between the dream or idea of a place and my actual experience of it in reality. They can be described as a collection of psychic coordinate points which I have plotted between the imagined America I brought with me from England and the real America I found on my arrival in 2008. These images are half truth and half fiction. They are a psychogeography, filled with personal symbolism and tangled with influences so old they were already part of me long before this journey ever began.

A note about the title:  The compulsion to travel, to move from one place to another, has been with me my whole life. Whether it be local, national or international, I have always found myself either in motion or, if not, I have been dreaming about it. Paradoxically, it has been in the periods of dreaming that Agoraphobia, (which Google defines as “Extreme or irrational fear of entering open or crowded places, of leaving one's own home, or of being in places from which escape is difficult”) has gripped me and, at times, crippled me. These photographs are my continued (once secret) revolt against it in the United States of America today, despite recent quarantines.