High Tide, Miroir d’eau, Meditations

Signed, titled, dated, and editioned on certificate of authenticity affixed to verso.

“For a long time I’ve been exploring the use of water as a medium, as a canvas, as a lens, as a mirror and particularily the effect it has on the way we see the human figure. In Paris in July of 2013 I was struck by a puddle of water on the pavement. The image in the puddle was of glass buildings overhead against a clear blue sky. I felt like the water was a window through the sidewalk into another world. The boundaries of the image in this other world were imperfect, they were blurred and they were not static because of the movement of the water. Nevertheless the water captured the image just as photography captures an image by artificial means.

It seemed to me that this primitive form of capturing the image might best be explored using the earliest form of the photographic process, Wet Collodion. The earliest days of photography consisted of creating a photographic emulsion on a piece of glass. The emulsion is literally poured over a piece of glass in much the same way as water in a puddle might cover a piece of pavement. The magic of photography allows the image to be captured in a permanent way whereas in the puddle when the water evaporates the image is gone.

These images are intended to convey the experience of that way of seeing. The indistinctness of the human figure, the irregularity of the frame in which it appears and the ephemeral atmosphere all echo, for me, the fleeting impression of life reflected in water. “