Desperation is a surreal photographic composite constructed entirely from photographs made in Cleveland, transformed through repetition, reflection, layering, and color.
A photograph of a sunset is repeated to create the subtle columned passageway receding through the background. Mirrored photographs of a thunderstorm over Lake Erie stretch across the top and bottom of the composition, preserving glimpses of a lightning bolt and distant freighter. A colorized tree moves through the landscape alongside fragmented images of Cleveland’s Guardians of Traffic.
While every element originates in Cleveland, nothing about Desperation relies on being recognized as Cleveland art. The city provides the raw material, not the subject. Its landmarks, weather, landscape, and light are dismantled and reconstructed into an imagined place that stands entirely on its own.
As the photographs overlap, their original boundaries disappear. The familiar becomes abstracted, architecture and nature become inseparable, and a landscape assembled from real places becomes something surreal, psychological, and impossible.
Desperation is a surreal photographic composite constructed entirely from photographs made in Cleveland, transformed through repetition, reflection, layering, and color.
A photograph of a sunset is repeated to create the subtle columned passageway receding through the background. Mirrored photographs of a thunderstorm over Lake Erie stretch across the top and bottom of the composition, preserving glimpses of a lightning bolt and distant freighter. A colorized tree moves through the landscape alongside fragmented images of Cleveland’s Guardians of Traffic.
While every element originates in Cleveland, nothing about Desperation relies on being recognized as Cleveland art. The city provides the raw material, not the subject. Its landmarks, weather, landscape, and light are dismantled and reconstructed into an imagined place that stands entirely on its own.
As the photographs overlap, their original boundaries disappear. The familiar becomes abstracted, architecture and nature become inseparable, and a landscape assembled from real places becomes something surreal, psychological, and impossible.
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