Collages

Cafe de la Presse, San Francisco, May 2007.

A photographer is confronted with a complex web of visual juxtapositions that realign themselves with each step the photographer takes. Take one step and something hidden comes into view; take another and an object in front now presses up against one in the distance. Take one step and the description of deep space is clarified; take another and it is obscured.
-- Stephen Shore

To this, add a reflecting surface, and the "web of visual juxtapositions" becomes even more complex. It can be anything: a window pane, a windshield, a granite wall. At the right angle of light, even a plastic book jacket could make Francis Bacon's image of Woodrow Wilson layer itself like magic over a child caught up in books.

Reflections can make visual collages that are the stuff of dreams. An airplane hovers over a bus that runs on a checkerboard street. Salt-and-pepper shakers are candle offerings borne by a woman's shadow. Door knobs turn a businessman into a cyborg. The Manhattan skyline materializes in a San Francisco street. A car crashes through a louvered window, but neither pedestrian nor saints care.

Creating order out of the mad jumble of things apparent and reflected is a puzzle whose solution oftentimes yields delightful surprises.