Intimate Landscape- My Personal and Photographic Journey
The photographs featured in this series were a vehicle for me to explore and ultimately depict emotions surrounding isolation, intimacy and intrigue.
This series is influenced by my 30-year relationship with my wife, also a physician, who sustained the impact of a needle which rendered her HIV-Positive during our first year of marriage. The resulting issues surrounding her unknown longevity, intimacy and love at times led me to social isolation.
During this period of creative experimentation I used metaphor to help me articulate the narrative. Images were produced at a range of places including snow fields in Fjallabak Iceland and dunes of White Sands National Monument in New Mexico. It depicts a period of my life full of emotional volatility, fear of intimacy and social isolation. I was losing Patti.
My work evolved naturally into a project entitled “Bodyscapes”. By strategically combining multiple photographs to create one complete image, each work functions as a departure from the loneliness and uncertainty that was engulfing me. Through combining the stark and often private experience of remote landscapes with images of the human body I forged a path to bring Patti back into the narrative of my photography, giving her permanence in my life as well as my artistic practice.
Eric Erickson (1902 – 1994), a noted twentieth century psychologist postulated that
.….in the first stage of adult development we begin to share ourselves more intimately with others. Avoiding intimacy, fearing commitment and relationships can lead to isolation, loneliness, and sometimes depression. Success in this stage will lead to the virtue of love.
Bodyscapes became my conduit to growth; my creative muse.