Happy New Year!

Overland Park (Postcard from Home)

I wish everyone a wonderful, inspiring and creative new year, full of amazing, unexpected and beautiful experiences - may they continue into the next.

Thank you all so much for your support, enthusiasm and continuous inspiration.

It is a wonderful world.

I wish you all my very best.

Cheers - with love

Simon X

Remains To Be Seen

For a while now I have been working on a personal project called 'Never / Together' which I have now recently re-titled 'Remains To Be Seen'. It has involved a direct exploration and an awareness of what photographer Harvey Benge referred to in his wonderful Photo-book 'Vital Signs' as the "I-ness in Other-ness". It is a recognition that when photographing we bring our entire personal histories with us when making pictures and that we see not only with our eyes, but with our minds also. For me this project has been a kind of ghost hunt.

 

This difficult new series of what are actually psychological landscapes constitutes a search for an understanding of one particular aspect of my own personal photographic vision and some of it's roots.

The images which make up this series are almost now complete and it rests uncomfortably as an incomplete document of psychic markers gathered here in the present, yet separated by 7 years and thousands of miles. My intention is, when finally edited, is to make a book which will both include these images and also a selected scattering of recently discovered poems and personal snapshots, which were brought with me to America and some other documents which were written at the time of the events it explores.

In my memory

Your image

Hangs in my heart

Like a beautiful

And timeless

Oil painting.

It is lit by candles

In a dark room

To which I have

The only key.

My expression

Is drawn

And flickers

In the low light

Of my fond

Recollections.

Yet the shadows

It casts distort

And make strange

Your features.

Sometimes.

A truth all the same

That I dare not describe

For fear of tainting

Your spirit which is

Captured in this portrait,

Which unlike you

Was beautifully

Executed.

More images from this series can be seen in previous posts on this blog or search 'Never / Together' here:

http://simonkossoff.blogspot.com/2010/08/never-together.html

http://simonkossoff.blogspot.com/2010/09/never-together-ii.html

Overland Park, KS (XI) Central Library

Continuing my project about Overland Park, where I live, these images were made at the Central Library, located on 87th street and a 5 minute walk from my home. The library is a place I often visit and I almost always seem to make one photograph when I am there. Other images made at this library can be seen in previous Overland Park posts.

Overland Park has been consistently ranked in the top 10 best cities to live in the United States, by CNN/Money magazine. Additionally, the city was ranked one of the ‘best places to raise your kids’ and also ranked 3rd for ‘America’s 10 best places to grow up’. As a photographer this news comes as an inspiration and something of a shock to me and I have decided to explore what it is that gives Overland Park this status.

Altered States of Agoraphobia Flickr Group

Chuck Patch

A Kochanowski

Jim Hart

Aaron Noah Graham

Don Hudson

Tim )ezra(

Alexis Gerard

For some time now I have contemplated extending my own personal photographic work to involve the work of other photographers and artists and last month I started the Altered States of Agoraphobia Flickr group as a response to this. These photographs presented here are only a tiny selection of the 1000 plus images which have already been submitted to this group.

This Flickr group, much like my own on-going work, could be described as a psychological, geographical and cultural investigation into the United States of America today by what I call its ‘Resident Aliens’. It is a contemporary photographic exploration into both the psyche of the artist and also a document of the world in which he inhabits and the forces acting on both. It is a journey which explores the destination with the aim of eventually creating, collectively, both a personal and also universal portrait of America by its residents.

It is an experiment which I hope is full of insight and discovery.

My intention with this group is to link some of the images submitted there to my blog in the form of edited sequences, artist’s features and for the purpose of exploring ideas, notions, observations and trends made by artists who are tuned into the subtle energies at work internally and externally in America today. The ASA members are psychic agents. A national artistic collective of like minded photographers with a certain outlook and of vision who are interested in making insightful and sensitive observations. It is a place where 1+1=3 .

I have also set up a separate blog to platform some of the work submitted to this new project. Altered States of Agoraphobia (II) which can be found by following this link below:

http://alteredstatesofagoraphobia2.blogspot.com/

Glore Psychiatric Museum

A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to visit the creepy but extremely interesting Glore Psychiatric museum in the city of St Joseph in Missouri. St Jo is also a beautiful city which I have plans to visit again and explore with my camera soon

This is what their Glore Psychiatric museum website says about it:

In 1968 the Glore Psychiatric Museum was started in an abandoned ward of the St. Joseph State Hospital by George Glore. He had been collecting historical psychiatric treatment devices as well as interesting items made by the patients of the hospital for over 40 years.

The original set up featured full size replica exhibits of 16th, 17th and 18th century "treatment" devices that resemble the torture devices used during the same period. These were created by George for a mental health awareness week celebration. The public loved them and he was encouraged by superiors to expand the exhibit. More mental illness treatment items were soon added and the museum had begun.

The museum was relocated to it's current location in 1997 when the asylum campus was converted to a correctional facility. Being located just off the main campus, the building was spared destruction by the project but is shadowed by the fence of the newly constructed Western Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center. Luckily, the building is still historical and maintains its ties to the past, it was built in 1968 - the year Glore first put together the exhibits - and was used as a clinic for the patients of the asylum.

Glore continued to develop one of the largest collections of mental health historical items until he eventually retired from the Missouri Department of Mental Health

Glore Psychiatric Museum
3408 Frederick Avenue (One Mile West Of I-29, Exit 47)
St. Joseph , Missouri 64506
816-364-1209 or 800-530-8866