Trust
I don’t like most nature photography.
Not that I mind it, I just don’t like it. I think the reason why is that, more often than not, it shows the non-human world as a higher, more pure realm of existence. So instead of simply being nature, it must be treated as Nature, and I am intensely suspicious of concepts that begin with capital letters. No matter how well-intentioned, they inevitably make the world less tolerant and more violent.
Instead, I feel at home in the in-between areas. Most of these photographs were taken in places that are neither wholly natural, nor wholly human-made. Virtually all were taken within 100-ft of a highway, a non-place that one goes to in order to be somewhere else. Photography is often used to bring clarity and definition — to pluck moments out of the stream of time and fix them so that they can be examined and considered. In many of these photos, though, I deliberately reduced the clarity, using the view camera’s movements to throw large portions of the scene out of focus.
In a grey world, where things do not fit easily into tidy dichotomies, it is not our beliefs that matter, but our ability to believe in each other. This is difficult., as we must move through our fears, instead of away from them. These photos are about this struggle, about navigating through a deceptive and unclear world.
I call this piece “Trust.”
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