Artist Statement: Isolation #1

It is easy to survey this image and take note of the four distinct subjects contained. Several connotations can be applied here in the aspects of loneliness, solitude, isolation, independence or seclusion. The remote nature of the image and its barren landscape with gray and dull tones produce a mystery about desolation. A single silo stands out in front of an overcast, cloudless, bizarre atmosphere. A situation in which less actually produces more due to the minimal color scheme and apparent focus of subjects.
These images in this series are related in the idea that single subjects stand out and are often isolated to give a meaning of single-ness. It is left up to the imagination if the single-ness represents a sense of independence, despair, loneliness, freedom, seclusion or gloom. The thought that has these different meanings gives this image a multiple contextual facet. Independence is a trait that often gives the impression of confidence, strength, assurance and power to name just a few. But on the other hand, looking at this image as an example of loneliness, which it is easier to view that way, the work leans to that gloomy side of loneliness with the barren foreground and bleak background.
The solo tree and rock support the scheme of isolation as those two subjects are highlighted. The juxtaposition of the solo subjects and their distance from each other give more clues to the bleakness contained here.
Although it is difficult to come to a conclusion as to what this image represents, there is no definitive answer, however, the idea of isolation has a permanence but with no allusion to a positive or negative denotation.
The process for creating this particular image became apparent the moment I noticed the scene. However, it was not until I had come back to it several times that I knew what the finished image would represent. My work is formed in two methods. The first is that I notice something and know what I can do with it almost instantaneously. The second is noticing a scene and capturing it because there is something intriguing there. I am not sure why or what there is about it, but as I come back to the image over and over the message begins to unravel itself. I find that this process produces imagery that is more thought provoking and meaningful.
Above all, I craved to seize the whole essence, in the confines of one single photograph, of some situation that was in the process of unrolling itself before my eyes. -Henri Cartier-Bresson