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LOST SPACES, FOUND GARDENS
2005-ongoing
These photographs were inspired by my
immediate surroundings in Brooklyn and Manhattan; particularly
by overgrown spaces that lurk almost everywhere, but that have
dropped off the map of collective consciousness. I’m
drawn to the surprises that I find here, to the almost
subversive thriving of natural life and unusual form.
Paradise is
the Persian word for a walled enclosure. As often as not, in
the city the walls are cyclone fences crowned with razorwire.
Whatever they lack in charm they make up by providing a framed
view from the outside. I find solace in the spontaneous gardens
behind the fences. And I’m inspired by all the wild
things invading them, by the relief they bring from the
city’s antiseptic geometry and sheen.
WILDERNESS
1994-2003
These photographs document ten years of exploration. TheyÕre the product of my search for a sense of placeÑphysical, cultural, and emotionalÑamid desolate surroundings.
In the early Nineteen-nineties I lived in Providence, Rhode Island, in a landscape at turns both overgrown and barren. New England row houses mingled with empty lots, crumbling husks of factories, and a dizzying web of trees, weeds, cyclone fences, and high tension wires. Layers of growth and decay confounded any attempts at easy interpretation. The landscape might have been formed by a simple mix of accident and neglect, but it felt to me like the work of a larger process. I saw a kind of unconscious synergy in the acts of people, nature, and erosion that had shaped these spaces over many years. When I moved and continued the project in an industrial section of Brooklyn, the mix of these elements changed, but the underlying feeling stayed the same. There was more to the garbage than garbage, more to the desolation than desolation.
I titled the work Wilderness in response
to these impressions. The word has meant different things to
different cultures over the years, but it has usually carried
senses of mystery, of darkness, and of journeying somewhere
beyond the borders of the comfortable and the known. The
Wilderness has been a place that we feared but at the same time
longed for, often with a sense that only there, far from the
safety and attachments of our everyday lives, might we finally
find ourselves.
SOUTHWEST
1988-ongoing
This work started when I was a student,
grew over the years I lived in southern Colorado, and will
continue to evolve, I hope, whenever I have a chance to visit.
Can anything worthwhile be added to the
ever-growing pile of pictures of the southwest? The challenge
used to be finding form in the vast chaos; now it’s
avoiding the picturesque clichés we’ve been
looking at all our lives. I tryÑwith mixed success I
suspectÑto capture reactions that are immediate and personal,
and also true in a sense that’s larger than myself. While
in the Southwest, my feelings are usually some mix of awe and
disappointment, serenity and anger. Conflict seems inherent to
the physical landscape as well as the emotional one; the region
has long been a battleground for opposing ideologies and myths.
The scars from these battles are evident almost everywhere.
I’d like to make some sense, without
rhetoric, of the beautiful land between these scars and of some
of the scars themselves.
CHICAGO
1988-1990
These pictures represent my earliest work.
They were made when I was a student, revisiting and
rediscovering the city where I grew up. The winter pictures
were all made during a ten day period in 1989, with help from a
grant from the Colorado College.
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This site and all content and linked files
© Paul Raphaelson 1988-2006. No part may be used without
permission.
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