About Field Studies
Field Studies contextualizes the human figure within the vicissitudes of geography and the natural world – its weather and its terrain. These photographs are a counterpoint to my studio work, which works by other rules: uniform backdrops and controlled light, the body considered in isolation as a visual canvas of line and weight.
The photographs in Field Studies were made in a handful of environments: slot canyons in the Southwest, areas of dried, cracked mud, open fields of grass under a moving sky, the still surface of a pond, and beneath the branches of a tree.
Each location interacts with the human form in a different manner. Sandstone frames the subject in a way that a plain studio background cannot – idiosyncratic shadow and organic texture press against the skin. The cracked earth becomes a graphic visual field, and the human figure folds into it. Tall grass crops and conceals. Water reflects and reduces the form to a torso mirrored above its own reflection.
With Field Studies, I’m less interested in framing the figure on a landscape than I am with placing that figure within one – centering it within the natural elements that a traditional studio excludes.