My own internal wall of waiting mental maybe’s..

Resident Alien. Part 5.

Follow up to previous post.

A few days ago my friend Don Hudson sent me this photo that he took of my apartment wall in Overland Park, Kansas, on June 14th 2013. It shows the Resident Alien book edit at that time with all the “keepers" set in partial sequence from left to right, with the “maybes” which also included other floating considerations, pinned up on the wall to the right (out of frame). 

Looking at this photo today, I can immediately discard 10 of them from the “keepers” wall without question and send a further 10 photos back to the “maybes” wall for future ponderings. Since my revisit to this series earlier this year and after seeing Don's photo for the first time just the other day, it has been interesting to notice how a few of these pairs have actually remained stable across time and have emerged again, together and intact 10 years later, when all previous knowledge of the sequence had apparently been forgotten without record.

I suppose I did live with this edit on my wall for a year and over that time they were almost certainly imprinted on my memory and stored in my unconscious as my own internal wall of waiting mental maybe’s. There is also no escaping the fact that certain images really do want to be placed next to certain other images, like both images can only be complete in their meaning when they are viewed together. Even after employing certain disruptive sequencing techniques, which have leaned heavily upon chance (more details on this later), has thrown a couple of these pairs back into the same arrangements. These pairs of photographs were made years apart and separated by hundreds of miles before finally finding their way next to one another up on the wall, again and today. They are fixed elements on a photographic periodic table of obsessive long-form procrastination..

Key: Red = Discarded. Green = Maybes. Pink = Pairs.

Off the map and out of touch..

Resident Alien. Part 4

.. So I made 4x6 inch prints of the Resident Alien series and pinned them up on the wall of my apartment with the idea of editing and sequencing them into a book. There was an opportunity for me to make a book at that time too, with POGO, out of Berlin in 2013, but sadly it didn't happen. Time had passed and I could not get myself or the work organized enough to do it. Editor Claudio Pheifer was understanding and kept the offer open, but not long after that I fell off the map and out of touch and now it's suddenly 10 years later. I missed several interesting opportunities at that time because my digital skill set was extremely limited and my attention was divided between EMT training, a job at UPS and the uncertainty around my immigration status. I continued to think about presenting the photos like a sort of movie trailer or channel surfing through my own American experience, or a psychogeographical survey (more about this later). I also had this idea about filling every inch of the book with photos printed on super high gloss paper so its overall impact would be something akin to glistening cultural pornography. Ambitious stuff, I know..

The photos were on my wall for about a year and in that time they moved around in an ever changing sequence I could never settle on as their numbers grew. There was an open invitation to anyone who visited to take a look at it and put a few pairs together as a spread or a run of images over a few pages. And now looking back, in all that time, I did not end up with any solid sequence at all and I kept no record of its progress. I still don’t have a sequence today because I have yet to start work on it. I am essentially back at stage one. What I am familiar with though is the strength of the work itself, seeing it together like this on the wall again, in 2023. I know what I’ve got and I know the feeling I get from it experienced as a whole, its clout, if you like..