A Deluxe Limited Edition Portfolio Edition of Two with One Artist’s Proof

One portfolio was recently purchased and acquired by the University of Colorado Boulder Rare and Distinctive Collections. ONLY ONE REMAINING.

The precipice where the body rests on the unseen point between life and death was one that I witnessed many times in the surgical suite. As a hospital photographer, I watched the performance of costumed medical professionals as they opened, sliced, cauterized, sponged, and reversed many of the same motions all in the attempt to heal the patient. The covered, anonymous patient thus puts their only true possession, their human body, in a state of vulnerability, exposing their delicate flesh in an attempt at a physical redemption. I became fascinated and deeply affected by both the drama and utter ordinariness of it, and the absoluteness of the process. Surgery was like an opera, a pageant; the actors, props, stage and lighting all hinging viscerally to the end of each patient’s earthly tale. It is this drama, this intense moment of transformation and the mystery of the unknown, the beauty and the tragedy, that I seek to capture in my images. The three projects in Farewell – the Surgical Theater, Morgue, and Tools examine of the physical nature of the body; look at the sterility, formality, and impersonal environments of the medical environment; and present their tools as typological and anthropomorphic symbols for both the procedures, and the bodies that they explore and dissect and their design for human use.

The Precipice is an ongoing and deeply personal project. The purpose of my work is to create a visual narrative that examines rather than shies away from how precious life is and that, despite how cold and finite death may seem, it is a vital and integral conclusion of a story that can’t ever be fully told without including it. So much of death’s story remains untold -- unseen, unwitnessed or not yet experienced. These projects created a vehicle to examine my deep desire is to explore some of our ideas about death’s enigmas. This photographic journey could have diverged in one way – the transition back into live, the rehabilitation, the healing, yet, this tale follows a clinical, sterile path of the body’s care after death. And this diversion guided my photographic path to examine the hospital’s morgue and, thus, a closer look at my relationship and a broader examination of the cultural and personal associations with death. In my work, death is the quiet context and the constant, the slow and steady pulse that is as much a part of living as that first heartbeat of new creation.

While some have a chance at redemption and vitality, others succumb to death’s call. This became a very personal exploration for me and while, to some, the examination may be macabre, this work pushes us to look at our soft, tender flesh and the body and vitalilty that resides inside as vulnerable. I aspire to have this project bring to the conscious conversation the truth that living is both a luxury and a dilemma; the more time any of us have on this earth, in these bodies and lives, the closer and more noticeable death becomes.