eclipsis
Selections from an ongoing body of work.
[Installation Views]
Project Statement
I traveled to a ridge in rural Idaho see the total solar eclipse on August 21, 2017. Although I prepared to “photograph” the eclipse, once the process began, I felt confronted with a limitation of the medium and my conception of what it means to “photograph” something. I could document the literality of the event—the phases of moon and sun, the corona, the scene of onlookers—but the affective resonance of the almost-supernatural experience fell flat. My memory, instead of a remembrance of the event, felt like a collage of images I saw both prior to the eclipse and distributed across social media afterwards. The photographs I made felt anticlimactic.
eclipsis is my exploration of alternate ways to represent this experience. I utilize photographs, found images, and photo-sculptural arrangements to explore the eclipses of 1979, 2017, and 2024. I consider collective memory through shared visual language, collecting archival ephemera to explore collective memory of eclipses. eclipsis, the word, is a multilayered hybrid of eclipse and ellipsis—a marker of three, a removal, and a bridge or portal between ideas.
Research revealed that North America’s next total solar eclipse will occur in 2024. Totality passes through Lake Ontario, where I spent a summer photographing the lake as daily practice. Could those photographs become representation of a future moment? In eclipsis, I utilize poetic, archival, and abstract forms to develop representation that extends beyond the document.