8 photographs approximately 40” x 50”, vinyl timeline and wall text
Each of the eight photographic prints has been transformed from an archive of hundreds of images originally collected from the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times, delivered to my home every weekend, 2000 to 2006. “Stranded Subject (weekends)” re-combines images to collapse the space of political and psychological boundaries, creating new narratives from those that are delivered to us, daily.
These are images of crises and disasters from all corners of the world as reported in the media. Highly public, politicized images of private lives, delivered to our homes for us to feel part of a public zeitgeist. The collision between public and private, fiction and fact, political and psychological fascinate me. Whose crisis are these? Whose violence? Cultures bleed borders. Horror and compassion, grief and titillation share our psychic space and compete for our attention. From where are we seeing each other? Whose memory as proverbial present tense?
As an immersive installation, a chronological timeline runs underneath the photographs and across the width of the gallery walls. This timeline represents the newspaper captions from each source image used to construct the new hybrid photographs. Whereas the timeline documents the news events chronologically and linearly, the photographs hover above in a dystopic version of history.
Image details
Stranded Subject (weekends/helicopter), 2005
Ramallah
Palestine, November 13, 2004, Los Angeles Times
LAST GLIMPSE:
Palestinians watch as two Egyptian helicopters, one bearing the coffin of
Yasser Arafat, arrive in the West Bank city of Ramallah. The crowds mobbed
the aircraft, dashing Palestinians official’s hopes for
a stately funeral ceremony.
Paris, France, May 1, 2003, Los Angeles Times
Thousands of people turn out
to participate in a May Day rally in Paris against far-right presidential
candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen with the Bastille in the background. Le Pen will
face off with incumbent President Jacques Chirac in Sunday’s runoff
election.
Stranded Subject (weekends/wailing women), 2006
Istanbul,
Turkey, November 2003, Los Angeles Times
ANGUISH: Relatives of victims of the synagogue explosions grieve at Sisli
Etfal Hospital near the site of one of the attacks in Istanbul. At least
20 people were killed and more then 300 wounded.
Stranded Subject (weekends/red dress), 2006, 2 panels
Beslan, Russia, September 4, 2004, Los Angeles Times
TRADING FIRE: Russian commandos help a wounded colleague as they and two
women try to take cover during the battle with guerrillas who took over a
middle school in the southern town of Beslan. Negotiations were being held,
but the troops stormed the building after it was shaken by explosions.
Stranded Subject (weekends/train), 2005
Tongi, Bangladesh, December 2, 2002, New York Times
Homeward Bound: Muslim pilgrims returning last week from a three-day Islamic
congregation in Tongi, Bangladesh. More than a million scholars, clerics
and other devotes of Islam attended.
Stranded Subject (weekends/Arctic), 2006
Beit Lahiya,
Gaza, March 8, 2003, Los Angeles Times
CONFLICT: Stone-throwing Palestinian youths run for cover from an Israeli
tank in Beit Lahiya in the Gaza Strip. Dozens of tanks have moved into the
area. Palestinian youths scattered as Israeli troops fired tear gas during
clashes in the northern Gaza Strip yesterday, as Palestinians marked the second
anniversary of the conflict with Israel.
US Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, February 21, 2005, New York Times
The coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, where the administration
proposes to allow drilling.
Stranded Subject (weekends/clouds), 2006
Amazon Rain
Forest, Brazil, August 21, 2005, Los Angeles Times
DEFORESTATION: An aerial photography shows Amazon rain forests burning in
Mato Grosso state, the engine of Brazil agricultural boom. Officials say
10,088 square miles of rain forest was lost to loggers, farmers and ranchers
in the 12-month period ending last August.
Iraq, November 25, 2005, New York Times
DOWNTIME: On Thanksgiving Day, Marines in Iraq take a break from the
war with a football game near the Syrian border.
Stranded Subject (weekends/tunnel), 2006
Southern
Iraq, March 27, 2005, New York Times
An Army photo shows a tunnel dug by prisoners at a detention camp in
southern Iraq discovered Thursday.
Amman, Jordan, November 10, 2005, New York Times
A victim lay on the floor
of the Grand Hotel in Amman, Jordan, after bombs exploded there and at two
others hotels in the city yesterday.