Contemporary Self-Portraiture

I'm pleased to announce I've been accepted in to Self Evident: Contemporary Self-Portraiture which opens at Claypool-Young Art Gallery at Morehead State University in Kentucky January 30, 2008 and runs through February 20, 2008. Clean 1 was chosen from my Repository series. Images Clean 1 and Clean 2(wet in the sink) are part of a performance which took place in the morgue. The first image was taken after several hours of setting up and trying different locations within the morgue for a self-portrait. It was my second attempt to photograph my self in this space. The composition for Clean 1 and Clean 2 was, naturally, the last placement I tried. As soon as I saw the Polaroid develop I knew this was the image. The lighting worked, not to overpowering in a room that was all stainless steel, the sink seemed to cradle my body while the hose formed a halo around my head. All elements which were hardly visible in the Polaroid. I only shot one frame of me dry showing the cable release and one frame of me wet holding the cable release. In all the other frames I tried to disguise it. In this way I feel I was very lucky in at least getting one usable image which varied. In between the making of the two images I bathed in the sink using antiseptic soap and a scrub brush which were both found in the morgue. I photographed my self dry, 12 frames with the RZ, getting out of the sink each time to wind the camera. Then I set up the video camera on the same tripod used for the photographs and proceed with two versions of a performance. Then wet and cold, got back out of the sink, transferred the RZ back to the tripod and again shot 12 frames of me wet.