ARTIST STATEMENT
Koan: a story, dialogue, question, or statement whose meaning cannot be accessed by rational thinking, yet it may be accessible by intuition.
Traffic cones: also called pylons, road cones, highway cones, safety cones, or construction cones, are cone-shaped markers that are placed on roads or footpaths to temporarily redirect traffic in a safe manner.
“Koans” is a body of work that I have been pursuing for over 25 years. It is an ongoing series of photographs of traffic cones that I have taken on the street or in my studio. The title of this series is a play on the words Koan and cone. A Koan is a question or statement that Buddhists use while meditating to help change their perspective or understanding of the world. I feel that my photos also serve this purpose as people never look at cones from the point of view I use and, after seeing the images, their view of them undergoes a slight shift and they are now able to perceive something mundane in a new and different way.
When I first began the series, I would only photograph the cones as I found them on the street. Being a bit of a purist, I didn’t believe that I should touch or move them in any way. When using Photoshop to create many of the grids and other visual juxtapositions used in my work, I usually don’t manipulate the photos in any way except for cropping and adjusting the levels a bit. Otherwise the cones are just as I photographed them.
As I was being treated for cancer several years ago I began to think about the bandages that the hospital used every day and how I could use them to wrap around cones to give them a different look. This led to photographing them in my studio and using lights, tape and other materials which opened new artistic possibilities as the resulting images seemed to be more astronomical than cones on the street. As my body changed and healed my art also began to change and move forward with its own new appreciation of life.
I photograph traffic cones, but the resulting images are more than traffic cones, they are visually arresting images that allow viewers to bring their own interpretations of what they are seeing but also bring them a new point of view. And this is what the history of photography has always been, a search to explain the world through enlarging one’s point of view. Photographers may have different subject matter, but the intent is the same: to focus on the chosen subject and explore it thoroughly in order to discover their similarities as well as their differences, to find out how the world around us speaks to us.