Slow Walk
Two nightmarish acts of violence characterized the United States’ entry into the 21st Century, and set the tone for life in a world in which the past could provide little help in navigating the future. The September 11 bombings taught us to fear the world outside of our borders, the Columbine massacre taught us to fear each other.
Like most people, I was horrified by the massacre at Columbine. But the discussions that followed, focusing on questions of “how could something like this happen” rang hollow for me. I grew up in an anonymous small town, and remember high school as a brutal rite of passage in which power was demonstrated through cruelty. While I could never condone what Harris and Kiebold did, I do believe that I know what they felt.
So I went to back to my high school. I wanted to see it as the man I am now, and to understand why my frustration and anger never turned into violence. That trip turned into the nucleus of this project, a meditation on the violence sleeping beneath the American landscape.
A crisis is more than just a confrontation with the external. It is also a facing up to the parts of ourselves that we pretend don’t exist, and hide away so we can believe we are good, normal, people. But our shadow selves, our nightmare selves, are always with us, waiting to be made into action. Made into flesh.
Made into blood.
I don’t know if my trip gave me any answers. As I looked at the pictures of bullies I’d once feared, they seemed no less frail and pathetic than me. They were as trapped in a violent, chaotic world as I was. And as trapped as we remain.
Artist Statement
I seldom know what I am doing as I do it.
There’s a line from a William S. Burroughs piece I like. I mention it when people ask what I’m working on. It goes something like:
“I am a secret agent and I don’t know who I am working for. I take my instructions from street signs, advertisements and snippets of conversation I pull out of the air like a hungry vulture tearing meat…”
I know that, in the end, it will be a body of photographs. But how many photos, how they will fit together, the story or feeling they will carry…. I never know these things as I’m working. I just photograph whatever interests me. Some of it will be useful later, most won’t. I think of it as being a little like riding a train facing backwards; things only become clear when they’re far away.
This is a work in progress. Right now, I imagine the finished piece tying together photos shot over the last ten years into a loose narrative about wandering. About going into the desert not really sure what I’m looking for, but believing that is there. And that somehow, once I’ve found whatever it is, I will be different. Whole.
But since I don’t know what or where it is, I just keep looking.
Frank Miller
2008