Current work November 8

I have several projects on going at any moment and I thought I'd share one. Everything that follows is a rough draft subject to change or abandonment!

Part 1
I am photographing the interaction of oil and water, and more specifically 'thin film interference'. I was inspired by the beautiful colors found in puddles where oil and water interacted after rainstorms. I would see these moments of color on black asphalt and have to stop whatever I was doing to stare.

However beautiful, the oil should not be polluting the water. Oil and water do not mix, and I see parallels and conflict between naturalism and industrialization in those puddles.

The oil is in the puddle because of a car. That car's production created jobs. That car carried people to their jobs, food from the grocery store to the table, and to leisure activities. And during its lifespan has spewed tons of greenhouse gasses as well as fed landfills with expendable parts.

The water is emblematic of life. It is ripe for metaphors- but I'll leave it at that.

With that in mind I started shooting, digitally at first and now with 4x5 slide film. The above image is one of my test shots where I was exploring how to create a thin film interference and how it would look.

It took me 2 months of tests, miss-starts, and failures before I started getting any thing in the studio like what I could find in puddles occurring naturally.