I left town with the intention of never going back..

I arrived in Lenexa, Kansas on April 1st 2018, I had come from the city of Noel in south Missouri, where I had been staying for about eighteen months. I had been in a turbulent and unhealthy relationship with a woman I had met there about a year earlier which was now coming to a bitter end. After I dropped her off at a Salvation Army homeless shelter I left town with the intention of never going back. She was now in trouble with the law and it was closing in. She had outstanding warrants in both Arkansas and Oklahoma and was considered to be (in Missouri) an out of state fugitive. Discovering this just came as more of the same low grade bullshit that my cognitive dissonance had come to accept about her, but this time I no longer wanted any part in it. A couple of weeks later, after I moved to Lenexa to live with my friend, Travis and his family, I heard she had been arrested by police during a traffic stop and went to prison for a year. 

The ground from which such strange fruits grow..

Altered States of Agoraphobia, A review by Philip Heying. 

"The image remains stable in its representation, but myself, as its viewer and author, is in a state of continuous flux across time and it is this feedback which informs my present self of itself in its ever changing state."

Simon Kossoff is a card carrying Resident Alien of the United States of America. He was born and grew up in Britain, lived in Norway and Spain, traveled widely, then moved to the US in 2008, where he has resided, and prolifically photographed, since. He brings the unique observational skillset that foreign born residents, like Alexis de Tocqueville and Robert Frank, apply to this raucous nation and culture. The work in his recently published book, Altered States of Agoraphobia is a significant contribution and advancement in this essential tradition of immigrants reflecting on the state of the American experiment.

It drives me a little crazy that I can’t quite remember how I discovered his photography on Flickr, back around 2010. Did some acutely informed friend recommend it to me? Did The Algorithm, for once, work as advertised and direct me to it? I can’t quite remember. But I’ll never forget the shock of recognition I felt when seeing his pictures.

A short time after I first found his Flickr gallery, I met him in person. Our shared affinity and affection for William Burroughs’s writing and life, and the Beat Generation in general, brought us into a friendship that has endured now for a decade. Throughout that decade I have often thought: man, I would love to see a fully produced book of his photography. Now, finally, that book has arrived.

Alongside his outsider’s perspective on American culture, Kossoff brings an exceptionally informed, innovative and innately talented pictorial formalism to photographing the geography, people, rituals, architecture, playthings and detritus found across this continent. This is the first thing that left a deep impression on me: His pictures are wild.

His life is as adventuresome, some would say dangerous, as his pictures. Honestly, there have been times when I’ve been worried about his well-being. But he has kept it together, - not without some injury, tough spots, and the kind of thing it’s best not to publicly disclose, - but now he’s solid and settled enough to have completed this book.

He apparently never stopped moving while making it, and has traveled through veins, capillaries and roots sitting directly atop the bedrock that the United States of America erupts from. The formal vocabulary he has developed and employed for making his pictures seems to be a perfect solution to the puzzle this country presents and represents. The pictures are entirely convincing - a casual viewer might imagine there’s no other way to depict their subjects. But his formal rigor is his own, developed through a lifetime’s study of the broad scope of the history of picture making, literature and music and then filtering that knowledge through his experience according to his tools at hand.

Though he’s an “outsider” - a “Resident Alien,” he has managed to do what most aspiring photographers never accomplish: he has gotten inside, and stared into it deeply, without flinching. Most photographers rely on autobiography, or some kind of journalistic credentials to create photographs behind walls - or, many photographers are plenty happy to drive by, walk through or look down on their subjects. Simon has gone deeply into the most personal revelation of life in America, as a participant, and he has done it without the slightest trace of autobiographical solipsism. We see infants (one of them taking aim with an assault rifle), lovers, bathrooms (is that real blood on the walls?), drugs, piles of $100 bills, hospital patients, an extraordinary closeup of a blister being pierced with a needle, a child carving a pumpkin slasher style with a knife that looks like it could find its way into an evidence locker, the kitchen sink… all with a startling, saturated intimacy. But Simon holds his personal cards pretty close. This isn’t a personal memoir so much as a forensic observation. This is what’s happening. There aren’t easy answers, nor an obvious escape hatch. It’s mysterious.

And so, depending on how you approach the work as it is reproduced in the book, its meaning shifts, rearranges like the chips in a kaleidoscope. Which is not to say the meaning is ambiguous or any less potent. The pictures are gripping. In total, they form powerful evidence for a reality that we construct through the drive of our consciousness. This is both an empowering and damning conclusion. When he is photographing in public spaces, the pictures consistently convey a psychic intimacy. They do this through potent visual metaphor, with colors that evoke specific mental or emotional conditions, shapes that reflect symbols systems, from Christianity to Tarot cards, from Buddhism to psychoanalytic iconography, from the technology of science fiction to the fundamental imagery of Paleolithic pictographs and petroglyphs, and relationships of form that convey the visceral experience of dance and music. Outside and inside fold in on each other, both in a literal sense and symbolically.

This is the magma that erupts with uniquely American character into events like the election of Donald J. Trump to the office of the Presidency, a nation with a healthcare system that’s an extortion racket, frivolous and barbaric military interventions, an opiate abuse crisis, constant racial strife, egregious gender disparity and, looming large over all of it, an environmental catastrophe with potentially apocalyptic consequences. Simon’s pictures forensically depict the ground from which such strange fruits grow.

This might be unbearably grim except for his remarkable capacity to find astonishing beauty, amazement, humor, human resilience and compassion right alongside disaster. Simon holds contradiction with the equanimity of a philosopher. This, ultimately, is the great achievement of his work. It depicts the fact of redemption and provides irrefutable proof that it courses through our lives constantly.

The book itself is beautifully produced. The printing, binding and packaging are exceptionally well crafted. The edit provides a compelling overview of his sprawling vision. It feels very good in your hand and is substantial. Beyond that, it also will likely leave you wanting more, and suggests possibilities for deeper, more specific edits that will more fully exploit Simon’s expertise in evocative sequencing and juxtaposition. Likewise, the design leans more toward large spectacular spreads that can compromise a viewer’s ability to take in the extraordinary rigor and inventiveness of his formalism. You’ll want to save space on the shelf beside it for sequels. This is a stunning introduction to his work that calls for deeper consideration. Fortunately, he has also produced some less elaborate zines that feel more personal. He also regularly writes for his blog, and his prose is as strong as his photography. In sum, this book suggests an essential breakout that will hopefully lead to further publication with more incisive purpose. Hopefully that’ll be coming soon.

Philip Heying

Matfield Green, Kansas

23 August 2022

Altered States of Agoraphobia. Page 36 & 37.

Page 36 (left).  

I could feel it there in my heart like it was home..

I found myself in Flagstaff, Arizona, in April 2020. No one knew what was going to happen then. I’d driven from Southern California and only been out there for a couple of weeks. When the medical treatment for my back ended up being a washout, I left. I didn’t know where I was going, and I didn’t much care. I was still angry and in so much pain that I could hardly walk. Anger and pain can make a person's world small, and I was already half crazy. I knew I was close to the Grand Canyon, the road signs told me so, and I could feel it there in my heart like it was home. I just needed to stop somewhere first, a motel, to hold up for a while, to eat, sleep and perhaps even conjure up some pain relief. Besides, I had an engine check light on, and I could not risk traveling any further until I had it looked at. 

This is where I met Ed. He approached me outside the auto shop the next day and asked me for a cigarette. I was waiting for my car and it was expected to take another hour. He was friendly and high, and he felt like talking. He told me he was staying in one of the nearby motels, which had offered quarantine to those without shelter. He was up from Phoenix and had missed his ride back. He wanted to visit his sister, whom he hadn’t seen for several years, who lived in Lenexa, Kansas, where he grew up. I told him that Lenexa, Kansas was where I injured my back and where I left a year ago on a journey I was, in fact, still on.

When my car was ready, we spent the afternoon running errands together, buying cigarettes, food, and later, opiates. My pain was one-third this and two-thirds that and the other, and the drugs immediately lifted my spirits and cleared my head enough to be able to dream again. The future, which was once obscured by sciatica and betrayal, now revealed its original shape. This brief and legitimate relapse brought with it a vision of my life where those things were not part of it, and I was thankful for the respite. Later, I dropped Ed off near a busy intersection where he liked to panhandle, and before we parted, I made this photograph of him. He said I could always find him here, especially in the afternoon. I was in Flagstaff for just over a week. I looked for Ed every day but never saw him again.

Page 37 (right). 

We had to leave before the simulation began..

When I lived in Lenexa, Kansas, I made a friend who was a low-budget horror movie scream queen but worked a day job at UPS. We hung out a lot. She lived with her Doctor in a large house in a wealthy subdivision in an arrangement I could never fully understand. My friend always had to check with the Doctor before we did anything together, and then she lied about what it was we were going to be doing. Sometimes the Doctor would say yes, and sometimes the Doctor would say no. Once my friend invited me to an emergency training event at the city of Olathe’s fire department. She was there to assist the volunteers with their gory make-up applications, and I was there purely out of curiosity with my camera in hand. I don’t remember what emergency was being staged, but that morning I took photographs of a wide variety of injuries. Sadly, we had to leave before the simulation officially began, because the Doctor called and needed my friend to return home immediately, via the pharmacy, where something was always ready for her to pick up.

Altered States of Agoraphobia is available to order from Eyeshot Publishing here.