'States of Grace' (part one) published at Netherworld Magazine

I found out this morning that part one of my photo series 'States of Grace' has been published at the excellent photography website 'Netherworld Magazine'. Many thanks to Marcin Klimek for doing a terrific job putting it all together. Please follow the link at the bottom of this post to view this feature (which is best viewed as a full screen slideshow) and see more of Netherworld Magazine.

STATES OF GRACE (Part One)

STATE:

1. the condition of a person or thing, as with respect to circumstances or attributes: a state of health.

2. a particular condition of mind or feeling: to be in an excited state.

3. an abnormally tense, nervous, or perturbed condition: He's been in a state since hearing about his brother's death.

4. a politically unified people occupying a definite territory; nation.

GRACE:

1. elegance or beauty of form, manner, motion, or action.

2. favor or good will.

3. mercy; clemency; pardon: an act of grace.

4. favor shown in granting a delay or temporary immunity.

5. an allowance of time after a debt or bill has become payable granted to the debtor before suit can be brought against him or her or a penalty applied: The life insurance premium is due today, but we have 31 days' grace before the policy lapses.

6. the influence or spirit of God operating in humans to regenerate or strengthen them.

Worlds of Fun, KS

Immigration Lawyer's Office

Waffle House

Event

This series of photographs was made during, and also in response to my process of immigration into the United States of America from the UK. It is a personal document – a mosaic of images or even (when viewed with part two) a poem of sorts. The immigration process took approximately one year and it was a difficult and deeply uncertain time for my wife and I. We could not make any solid future plans or put down any roots, just in case. While making this work I often felt like my own anxiety and hope was also a kind of an echo of the anxiety and hope of the nation I had arrived in, which was in the grips of recession and in the middle of an election campaign for a new President.

Follow this link to see both this feature and see more of Netherworld Magazine:

http://www.netherworldmagazine.com/

Motels (III) The Most Haunted Places in America

Holbrook, AZ (Wigwam Motel II)

Knob Hill, KY

Conway, TX

Little Rock, AR

This is a selection of images from my on-going series about Motels (The Most Haunted Places in America).

When I'm traveling I like staying in cheap motels. There's something about them which captures my imagination. I love the atmosphere, the dated and crumbling decor, the buzzing neon signs, the musty smell of the rooms and the people that use them. I love to listen to the stories of those that work in the office. I love the plastic dusty flower displays, stale coffee, the old TV's and faded pictures hanging on the walls. I love the cracked cement parking lots, the broken coke machines and the Bible in the bedside draw with the broken back. What I love most of all are the dreams I have in the bumpy uncomfortable beds after a day of driving. Laying in the darkness listening to the trucks thundering past on the road outside I think about all the people who have stayed in the very room I am in. I imagine all the things that could have possibly happened and feel the fleeting ghosts of their presence echo around me. In the darkness I contemplate my own flickering sepia place in it's transitory history. For me they are the most haunting and haunted places in America.

Please follow these links to see more images from this series:

Part One: http://simonkossoff.blogspot.com/2009/12/motels-most-haunted-places-in-america.html

Part Two: http://simonkossoff.blogspot.com/2010/07/motels-ii-most-haunted-places-in.html

Wemego, KS. The Oz Museum (behind the curtain)

For a while now I have had a fascination with internal and artificial landscapes. It is a theme which has threaded it's way through much of the work I have made so far in the USA and whenever I am lucky enough to see and be in one, I always feel strongly compelled to photograph them.

I am interested in the illusion and the fantasy these places attempt to create and sometimes (in terms of my Cage series) their grim reality too. I love the theatre and suspension of disbelief which goes with standing in a themed museum for example. I always find that these artificial landscapes jar heavily with my own dreams, ideals and experiences and they are always, ultimately, strange, floored and sadly human.

These artificial and internal landscapes often force me to consider my own real life experience of landscapes which I have stood or lived in and questions what I have done with them myself, psychically. I think we are all filled with a lifetime - a history of landscapes, which have themselves, in turn, become a part of who we are as individuals. They become part of our own mental geography, full of archetypes, symbols and markers - integrating themselves inside, with special and personal significance. I always find it interesting and amazing, for example, when a landscape I have recently (or not recently) experienced suddenly becomes the location of a dream I have had. Why has this particular landscape or place been chosen to play out the drama of this dreams events at this time? It is something I find endlessly fascinating..

These photographs were made last weekend in Wemego, Kansas at the excellent and well worth visiting 'Wizard of OZ' museum and marked my three year anniversary since moving to the United States.

Here is what their website says about it:

"What words could be more appropriate when describing the dream of a small community that literally built a museum out of a rainbow's notion? It took the brains of a small group of leaders, the heart for what L. Frank Baum began in 1900 as a simple children's book and the courage to take on the task of constructing a home for over 2,000 artifacts dating from 1900 to today.

The OZ museum was built with a major grant from the State of Kansas and the generosity of the people of this small community, who also provided thousands of hours of volunteer time. The museum houses more than just memorabilia from the famous 1939 MGM musical starring Judy Garland! It encompasses earlier silent films, one of which starred none other than Oliver Hardy (Laurel and Hardy fame) as the Tin Man as well as "The Wiz" starring Diana Ross and Michael Jackson.

The OZ Museum offers everything imaginable from the earliest Baum books and OZ Parker Brothers board games to today's collectibles that can be purchased in Auntie Em's Gift Shop. The OZ Museum is dedicated to ALL things OZ. It is a treasure trove of delight and wonder and thrills visitors young and "young at heart."

http://www.ozmuseum.com/about/default.htm

Of course I did make lots of photographs of the actual exhibits and artifacts on display and I may post some of them here at a later date.